


River of Stone

by frangipani



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: AU of an AU, Captivity, Depression, Domestic Drama, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Idfic, Imperial Culture, Melodrama, Self Harm, Trauma, Whump, everyone's a raging dumpster fire, imperial ideology, kyber crystal woo, meta text, not a hero's narrative, portrait of the emperor's hand as a young girl, vaguewriting time travel, wars in our stars gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-05-28 06:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 92,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15042755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: Mara Jade's life ends when she's seventeen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist [here](http://teagrl.tumblr.com/post/175374940962/my-mini-playlist-for-my-next-fic-let-me-try).
> 
> This fic being an AU of an AU (where it departs from what we know is, as usual, the gimmick) bears some disclaiming:
> 
> 1\. Be aware it is **[idfic](http://teagrl.tumblr.com/post/176035622627/what-does-idfic-mean)** , and thus, with a rather loose relationship to canon (example in my last idfic Luke goes to see a bdsm hooker, see what I mean with _loose_ ? This is, ah, not that fun tho). 
> 
> 2.Do mind the tags and consider how much imperial ideology you can stomach with all of what it entails (emperor worship, death cult, fantastic racism, pretty hate machines, etc). A lot of this fic pivots along ugly ironies and hardcore pov unreliability given the subject matter. In other words, frangi is on her grimdark shit again.
> 
> The frame/meta text is embellishment based on James Luceno's Rogue One prequel, [Catalyst](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Catalyst:_A_Rogue_One_Novel), because I have yet to see a pretentious literary device I don't want to use.
> 
> I thank [strangeallure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure) for her help in tireless spot on beta, suggestions, and plot unfucking. Any mess ups here are 100% mine. May your brunches ever be organic!
> 
> 11/20 Okay we are ~kind of back. Updates will be on the slow side. But we will finish sooner rather than later.

  


PROLOGUE

__

  
_4.14_

  


_Sometimes what G. says rings to me of sorcery. I need to sit and transcribe his notes to convince myself it isn't, to look at the charts and diagrams of the kyber crystal and see it as what it is: a source of energy. So much, G. theorizes, that it can pull the poorest worlds out from the consortiums' clutches. It is only a matter of harnessing that energy, but the Jedi left no instruction on how. Through the Force, certainly, but we cannot speculate more. There is so much we don't know about the use Jedi gave it. G. is convinced they wanted knowledge of the kyber for themselves as a marker of their elite status. I cannot agree. Perhaps they simply didn't know what science could offer. It hardly matters, he says, the Clone Wars are over and they're gone; we are now the custodians of the kyber._

_I cannot shake unease at the irony. Aren't we but poor substitutes? Even knowing the function of a lightsaber for instance, there are bits that science cannot account for. Some phenomena are not reducible to data tables and equations. Like the Force -- not everything in nature is reducible, there is space for mystery even in science. G. disagrees and calls me a believer. His is a faith too, though he'd never admit it._

_I come again and again to the value Jedi gave the kyber. Is putting this stone through pressure the way we are, cutting through its occlusions and blemishes, not performing violence upon the sacred? Do our ends justify this violation? G. would say we have no choice. We cannot touch the kyber like the Jedi did to make it yield its power. In lieu of the Force, we have the machine. This is good, we are told. We are in a different era, an era of science and order, and the kyber must be brought into it. We must forget what it was in favor of the dream of what it could be._

_The thought gives me no peace. Was it power alone the Jedi were safeguarding through the kyber or something else, some other precious connection granted to them through the Force? What are we doing to that?_

_There is no end to the questions, and no one left to ask, only a deafening silence as I look at the kyber, a somnolent stone, a living ghost, a reminder of all that has been lost._

_Absence has its own mass, creates occlusions in us._

_I wish things had been different._


	2. Chapter 2

  


####  DRY SEASON

  


_The managers lived obsessed with death...They saw danger everywhere. They thought solely of the fact that they lived surrounded by vipers, tigers, and cannibals.  It is these ideas of death... that constantly struck their imaginations, making them terrified and capable of any act._ [[x](http://teagrl.tumblr.com/post/173625952362/the-importance-of-this-colonial-work-of)]

  
  
_You don't want to hurt me_  
_But see how deep the bullet lies_ [[x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQGmLw0Aj4U)]  


  


  


##### I. Mara Jade

  


* * *

  
2.9  


The kyber crystals in the case O. brought in for G. were finger-sized, translucent. They could have only come from Jedi lightsabers. We were told that now with the Jedi gone that we have access to the crystals the Order used to safeguard. G. is beside himself with excitement. Even J. wanted one. ~~As I looked at them all I could think about was that the Jedi were truly gone.~~

* * *

  


Mara wakes up lightheaded, screeching pounding through her ears.

Her vision's hazy. A blink and bleeding red becomes shapes and--

She’s upside down, smoke all around her. Her hands fumble with her crashwebbing, too sluggish despite her urgency. She hits the canopy release.

The impact as the webbing gives knocks the breath out of her, but Mara shoves herself out, ending up on the ground. She lifts up to all fours, rips off her helmet. Maybe not the brightest thing to do -- the acrid smell of smoke and charred electronics makes her cough. 

Her ship is on its side, she notes while coughing, unable to stop and catch her breath. The world tips and grows fuzzy at the edges. 

She presses her gloved hands to the ground as she coughs and coughs, out of breath. Soft ground yields under her fingers, but the world whirls further and grows distant. Her grip offers no purchase against its dizzying slide away.

Coolness lies against her cheek as she keeps coughing, pain across her ribs. She's on her side now, she pieces. Everything is so far.

And then it's gone.

* * *

Mara sits up with a gasp.

She feels bruised and hollow with hunger, but that’s it. Some of the dirt from flightsuit smears across the bright white bed sheets beneath her when she moves her arm and she winces. The last thing she remembers is...

\--the sensors blaring hysterically, instruments giving her readings she could do nothing about. Before her viewscreen the mountain was coming up too fast, trees taking shape. She _couldn't_ pull up, braced for impact--

She inhales. She'd crash landed. Okay.

Mara turns her head to scan the room further. She’s on a bed. Wooden walls make the room look rustic, but it's environmentally controlled, she guesses by the temperature, the absence of humidity. Mara turns her head towards the window beside her bed to her left, a bedside table stands on the other side. 

“You’re up. How are you feeling?”

Her gaze moves towards the source of the statement, the accent something she can’t place for the moment, but off.

The man stands in front of her, several paces away, attired in a casual long-sleeved blue tunic and dark pants. He’s not too tall, on the lean side, fairer than what is usual for Akiva’s human settler population, at least according to her briefings. His posture is rigid, but he’s unarmed by the looks of it, no holster in sight either. Behind him to the left there's an armoire. There's a small desk to the right against the wall. No chair. That, the bed and bedside table comprise all the furniture in the small room. There's another window on the opposite wall.

Mara’s eyes return to the man. He’s about a decade older than her if she had to guess. Cleft chin, but apart from that nothing of note. When their eyes meet, he draws a breath, an emotion she can’t decipher clouding his eyes for an instant before it recedes to simple concern. 

A chill goes down her spine.

“Good.” Her voice is a little hoarse and she clears her throat. “Really good for --” she tilts her head. It’s day, light coming in from the windows, although not that sunny. Trees cluster past what looks like a wooden veranda -- the trees' grayish serpentine roots dominating the view. Beyond them there’s a classic tropical landscape of broad leaf ferns, palm fronds, vines and dull green underbrush. Four metal bars, window railings, chop up her field of vision. A look at the other window reveals the same railings there. Her unease intensifies. She blinks. Her danger sense is oddly mute.

“Really good, for the fact that I -- I crashed, didn’t I?” She slides her eyes back to him, pretending not to have noticed the bars. There are folded clothes of neutral colors on top of the bedside table. “You rescued me?” She forces a smile. “Thank you.”

He nods, smiling back, a bit sadly. So he’s a bad liar. Good. And the lying goes on when tells her his name is Asher Sunwhite. The name strikes her as fake so fast she doesn’t even need her Force sense to scream warnings. It still doesn't, but she can't think about that right now.

“The crash wasn’t too far from here,” he says, the smile fading. 

“Where is here?”

“Boeher Mountains.”

The closest mountain range to Myrra, the capital, her mind supplies. She can't remember how close, a detail she'd filed as irrelevant when she'd looked over the documents.

“This is your property.” She makes a point of looking all around. 

There’s a three-inch razor blade in a fold of her chest wrap. She doesn’t like using it, but all her other weapons are in the wreck. She almost gasps at the next thought. Her lightsaber. If he’d found it, that would explain a lot. Lightsabers are illegal.

Mara folds her hands in her lap as he nods. 

”I crash landed,” she repeats slowly, as if she’s disoriented. There’s not much playacting in that. She is, but less than he would expect her to be -- or so she hopes. She rubs her face and tries to figure out why she crashed. Can’t. Doesn’t matter so much now, she tells herself, though there’s a sliver of mortification under the worry. This might be the first mission she's done in the Outer Rim, but she’d aced all her sims, all her flight tests...

Her eyes flicker up to him. “My ship?”

“There’s little left of it,” he tells her gently. “It burned up pretty bad after the engine rupture.”

Engine rupture? She doesn’t remember that.

Would you like to eat something?”

Mara tamps down on a flash of panic. The damage from that kind of crash can’t be true if she feels like this, no broken bones, or other wounds. Lie. He hasn’t asked for her name, another alarming sign. Why isn't her danger sense blaring? How hard did she hit her head?

“I’m Solustade Vatler, my father is Ponce Vatler, councilor of health.” It’s a cover, but Vatler is a firm ally here. If anyone should mention Solustade, he knows enough to act concerned. 

The man's expression doesn’t change at all with the name -- maybe the mountains are just that distant from civilization, a worrisome thought. She goes on, “Could I have a comm? I should let my family know I’m all right.”

“Eat something first.” He didn’t answer her request. Her stomach clenches. “You’ve been asleep for almost a day. You must be hungry.”

Mara draws a breath. A day? She won’t eat anything he gives her. 

“I won’t be able to eat thinking of how worried my family is." She makes her voice shake just so. “Just let me talk to them first.”

He thins his lips. “That’s a little difficult. There is no signal here in the mountains. We’d have to walk down for a few miles. I’m not sure you’re up to it so soon.”

Even though she expected it, the denial of her request sends a rush of adrenaline through her.

Training keeps her still, makes her bow her head. _Compliance_ , Raice’s voice sounds in her head crisply. _The semblance of compliance. You are too young for direct combat with an adult. Whatever edge you have, it’s in surprise. Stealth. Duplicity. Hone these._ “Oh.” 

“There’s some clothing there.” The man gestures to the bedside table. “Why don’t you get dressed and eat something, and we’ll see what we can do.”

She raises her head and smiles a fluttery smile. The smile that says _take care of me_ , the one Lady Foriter had showed her and made her practice again and again. 

The man frowns, but doesn’t reply. Mara has turned her focus back to the room.

Her earlier scan didn’t reveal anything to be used as a weapon, but when he leaves for food she can take a closer look. Maybe there’s something with more range than the razor.

She slides her legs out. The floorboards creak once her weight is on them, a bizarre sound that makes her stop before raising her eyes to her captor and forcing another smile. “Thank you. I’m, ah -- ” Something in character, she thinks, “sorry I -- the sheets -- I got dirt all over them.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he says, but doesn't smile back, his face lined with concern.

Mara tilts her head. “What is it?”

The man blinks and shakes his head, that’s when he offers her a small smile with a tinge of hopefulness she can’t understand. “Nothing. Come out when you're ready.”

He turns and leaves, closing the door behind him.

Mara springs into action, checking the windows. The mechanism is jammed in some way; the windows open only enough for her arm to fit and bump up against the bugscreen. She's only able to fully reach the one by her bed, the other is about a foot above her head. Then there are the bars she feels through the screen. 

She abandons the windows searching quickly but silently through the drawers of the bedside table, inside the armoire, which has various neutral tunic sets. The floor and walls are wood -- this must be some sort of cabin. She finds that the few items of furniture are nailed to the wall, but she funnels her surge of fear into continuing her look through the room, crouching down to look across the floor, under the bed.

Nothing. Not even a dust ball.

Nothing she can use.

She clenches her teeth. This is a trap. An involved trap. It can't be just that he found her lightsaber and thought her a thief. This is too involved.

Someone betrayed her. 

Someone betrayed the Emperor.

There’s a knock on the door. “You okay?” he calls.

She scrambles to dress, takes the razor out, and slides it carefully in her hair and repins the mess of it quickly. Even without a mirror, pinning her hair up isn't a challenge; it's only to her shoulders, regulation length. Raice and Lady Foriter had her hair cut before the mission. By this time next year when she has it cut, it will be at her discretion, Lady Foriter had told her. She would be of age then.

“Yes, just a little sore,” she answers back. 

The man is right outside the door when she opens it, expression cautious. Her eye roves over him. He might not be tall or densely muscled but she can’t underestimate the pounds he has on her. 

A short hall extends behind him with a closed door to the right. He gestures to it. “That’s the 'fresher. Would you like to use it?”

She nods. Maybe there's something there. A window she can climb out of. Something she can fashion into a weapon.

Mara walks in and closes the door. The 'fresher is small, but nearly empty, looking like no one has used it before. There’s a tub with a showerhead. Soap has been left there in its wrapping. A pale yellow towel hangs on the rack.

The lone window above tub is smaller than the one in her bedroom, two rails on it instead of four, a section of the tree trunks she saw from the bedroom window are visible if she stands on the tub's rim. The trees' roots extend out like muddy brown tentacles, framed by the mossy green of the vines and vegetation crawling on it, hanging down over it. The window opens about as much as the window she tried in the bedroom, only enough for her arm to go through, for her to touch the bugscreen and feel the unyielding metal of the window railings through it. 

She turns to the sink and the cabinet behind the mirror. Empty. No supplies that point to it as lived in. Nothing under the sink except basic toiletries.

Mara washes her hands and face, marveling that there’s no marks of the crash on her. It grants her situation the surreality of a bizarre nightmare. At any moment she'll wake up in her bed and go over the comments she'd received to her last Classical Culture assignment, and the corrections to her latest physics problem set, or have to dash to the studio or the range. 

But no, she's opening the door of the 'fresher to find a stranger, her captor, to walk down a short darkened hall with him behind her.

She could grab her razor, whirl into an attack, but it’s risky. The hall is too narrow. 

A few steps and it opens up to a wider room, a kitchen and living area. The kitchen is immediately to Mara's left, a round dining table to her right and beside it, the doorway to another room. The door is closed, so her eye travels to the bland living space at the end of the room. Only a sofa and a coffee table occupy it, along with several rustic lighting fixtures. 

Light right now comes in through the six windows that take up most of the left hand wall, the far side to where she stands, one along the kitchen area, the rest along the living room. Beside them there's an access panel-operated door of a material that seems like glass. Mara knows better. If it has an access panel it’s transparisteel. The closest analogue that pops into Mara's head is a greenhouse, but the cabin is more shadowy than any greenhouse she’s been in. 

The windows look out to the wooden veranda she saw from her room to the same cluster of trees. If the light is this diffuse, Mara suspects it's because the cabin is in a small clearing. She estimates it's the early afternoon, and imagines light sneaking in through the thick vegetation surrounding the cabin. This should be the reason for all the gloomy crevices. It could also be how borderline spartan the whole place is, there is no decor to speak of, no flat holos, nothing to give a lived in quality, personality, much less taste. The only impression the cabin has given her is of a hasty set up, only the bare essentials.

A bad sign.

Mara scans the kitchen for knives, Raice’s voice in her ear. _A blaster is best for efficiency’s sake, but a knife can also have its use. No one will expect your skill with a knife_. It's a small space made up of an oven, pulse oven, conserve and cabinets.

No knife block. 

She bites her lip. Her eyes wander again to the window. An image of a cabin, raised up from the leaf littered ground of the rainforest flits through her head, hazily, something she’d scanned through quickly in the documents given to her, but dismissed. Myrra had been where the target had been. Her focus had been on its urban sprawl.

The dining table before her has two place settings, two plates with some bread and something else she doesn’t recognize. Her eye is drawn to the flimsiplates and the utensils look like home plastoid. Her stomach sinks as she goes to sit, careless like Solustade Valter would. Trap, trap, trap, she thinks, but for once her danger sense is silent. She can't worry about that now, not when the rest of her instincts are screaming this loudly.

She adjusts the chair to check for mobility. There’s that, but the table is heavy, flipping it would be difficult.

If this is the trap she's taking it for, the door’s probably locked. Unless he'd underestimated her. 

The man stays standing. He's facing her, his back to the darkened hall behind him. “I mean you no harm."

She raises her head and fakes a nervous smile that might not be so fake. “I just need to contact my family.”

The next words land like a blow: “You don’t have any. I know who you are.”

Another fluttery smile. She inches back to underscore her unease and give herself some room. Why isn't her danger sense blaring? 

“What? No, you can contact them for me if you like. My father is Ponce--”

“It’s a cover,” he continues. “All this. You’re an agent of the Emperor. His Hand. Your name is Mara Jade.”

Mara forces out a tittering laugh. “No, I am Solustade Vatler.”

“Your mission here concerns the Satrap,” he waves a hand, “but that doesn’t matter. You’re calculating right now how to run.” He stops. “I just -- I would like you to listen --”

Mara inches back on the chair, some more, makes herself small, even as she turns the whole of her attention to the man. The accent sounded off because it's that slightly nasal Outer Rim intonation. She knows from holos, the vowels too soft, consonants mashed. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She makes her voice shaky. “I am Solustade Vatler.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeats. “I would rather you didn’t attack me. But if you do, I’m still not going to hurt you.”

“Please. You’re scaring me.”

“You’re acting.”

She stands, pushing her chair back. “I have to go. Thank you, but --” She bolts to where the exit is, a hand on her hair slipping the razor between her fingers in a practiced motion. Beyond the transparisteel door, the woods beckon.

This close she sees the control panel’s blaring red.

Locked. A code is required.

The woods outside mock her.

She turns around to find the man hasn’t moved from where he stands.

He raises his hands, gazing at her fixedly. “I mean you no harm.”

She sets her jaw over the panic. “This isn’t the set-up of someone who doesn’t mean harm,” she blurts out, wants to kick herself after. That’s not what Solustade would say.

A disturbed expression crosses his face. “What they’ve primed you to expect -- this is not it.”

“I am Solustade Valter. My father is--”

“A bureaucrat’s daughter wouldn't have been piloting a scout ship with an Imperial military transponder code.”

Another scan of the the room. The razor is unyielding between her fingers. “You need to let me go.” 

"I can’t do that right now." He gestures to the chair. "Please sit."

In her head, there’s Raice’s voice again, _never fight an adult head-on unless you have to, you will shame the Emperor by dying out of recklessness, wasting all the resources he has poured into you_. 

She grits her teeth. She came here on a covert mission to infiltrate the Satrapy’s palace and rid the Emperor of the Satrap's corrupt uncle, a straightforward assignment-- what she’d done for the past year at the palace complex, mostly under Raice’s supervision -- but alone. Lightyears away. It'd been a name day gift.

She’d looked forward to it.

“I won't hurt you.”

I’m not sixteen anymore, she tells herself. Small circular motions. Target the eyes and face. It will be bloody. Her heart hammers in her chest. She hasn’t done _bloody_ yet. 

“There’s nothing to use here. I’m not going to hurt you, but I’ll be forced to restrain you if you try to hurt me.”

Mara stiffens. But wait -- _nothing to use_ means he hasn’t seen her razor. 

She walks back, makes as if to sit, but sweeps her plate away, the food falling, just as she slashes up with her right towards his throat, pushing the razor out with her thumb. She deliberately drops the razor, moments before his hand stops her wrist, catches the falling blade with her left in a move whose speed her master would praise. She knows because his power _sings_ within her.

The man evades a slash in his cheek by merely an inch, but evades it when he shouldn't have. In the next second as he reaches to grab her left wrist as he knew where she'd lash out with it, and pull it behind her. It's over barely before it's begun. She’s twelve again, Bayeran chiding her about her speed.

 _Save your own life, girl,_ he used to say. Before he was sent to Lothal, to help with the campaign there.

Before the rebels killed him.

* * *

Mara ends with her hands cuffed behind her and to the chair, a data point for her trouble. He's a soldier, a combatant. Too fast for her. Stronger. Her instructors were always right.

“They’re going to come looking for me," she stares straight on ahead, "I am an _Imperial agent_. You have no idea what you've done.”

The man cants his head. “Your ship is destroyed,” he tells her matter of factly, “No one is going to come looking for you.”

She stays staring ahead. Add destruction to imperial property to the list of crimes. “Let me go now and you’ll have a running start for when they come.”

He drops to the seat opposite hers across the table and the scene feels surreal again. Even in training, someone would already be screaming in her face. He sits like he’s just gone through an unpleasant but necessary part of a mundane task.

“People are the last thing the Emperor thinks about. And not in the way you think.”

Her lips curl into a sneer, anger surging up like a wave. She recognizes this. Rebel talk. It’s about time. She lifts her chin. She’s said this in training so many times it comes out as reflex. “You may as well kill me now. I won’t tell you anything.”

“I don’t want any information.”

Her eyes narrow. That’s not what comes after. 

“All I want is for you to know the truth.” If she weren't cuffed and all too aware of her predicament, she'd laugh at how trite his words are, like holonovel drivel. The man goes into a recount of all the deranged things rebels say. She tunes the lies out, keeps searching the room, and gradually becomes conscious again of the gnawing feeling in her stomach.

“Mara.” 

Her head snaps up automatically at the call and she pulls back her resolve. There has to be a way out. She just has to find it.

She raises her eyes. “How do you know who I am?” 

He looks pained. “I -- I can’t tell you.”

Mara presses her lips together tightly. Protecting a traitor in the court. Her master's court.

“You must be hungry.”

Her stomach rumbles loudly. What he's offering could be poison. Her eyes dart to the food on the floor. He could be wanting to make her eat the food off the floor.

“The food is safe.” The man pushes his plate towards her. When she doesn't move, he picks up her piece of bread and tears it in half. He takes a bite. “See?” A shadow of that sad smile plays on his face. “If I untie you, will you promise not to attack me?”

The tone skirts a tease, too familiar. A wave of scorn comes over her. He’s rebel trash. There are not enough commonalities between them for him to speak to her like that.

He goes to undo the cuffs, regardless of her silence. She considers an attack, but she hasn’t eaten since she was in orbit. More than a day, perhaps. But it's the sabotage that rankles. A traitor at court. She needs to find out who, needs to warn her master. 

She needs to play along, regardless of the risks.

Mara grabs the piece of bread on her plate and eats it before the man has sat back down. She barely tastes it; at best it’s merely sustenance.

“It’s all safe.” He picks up the plastiknife to cut a bit off the cheese or whatever it is on his plate and eats it. “See?” he says after. "It's got nothing in it."

She goes for it wordlessly, and they continue on in that way until her plate is clean.

“Fresher?” he asks. “You can use the shower if you like.”

Time alone to think would do her good. Mara nods.

If no escape is apparent, it’s been drilled into her, _wait_.

_Don’t put to waste what the Emperor has given you._

_The semblance of compliance_ , Mara thinks, and hears her old instructor's gruff voice. 

_Save your own life._


	3. Chapter 3

##### II. Remnant

  


  


* * *

  
2.12  


A crystal unlike any we had seen before was brought to the complex. It was a translucent euhedral, gigantic, the size of a small hut. G. was spellbound by it. Where did it come from? ~~Perhaps one of the Order's secret temples?~~ Are there more? What function could such a crystal have had?

* * *

  


In the ‘fresher while the shower runs, Mara stands on the rim of the bathtub to try the window. Like the windows in the room, it doesn’t open fully either, the locking mechanism is jammed somehow. Past the wooden veranda, enclosed by a railing, she glimpses the trees and their thick winding roots. A poor terrain to run through --if she could get out, but she can’t right now. Mara lowers herself and resumes her furious scrubbing under the water, her ears trained on the ‘fresher door. It has a locking mechanism, but it only locks from the outside.

What does this man want with her?

 _For you to know the truth_ , he’d said, which had all the makings of an ideologue. Did he hope to turn her into a traitor, make her spill all manner of secrets that simply? 

She quickly towels off and dresses -- the clothing he's provided her are too big, but at least not enough to hamper her mobility. 

Maybe it’s her age. The same reason her level of skill is unexpected to most, perhaps she comes across as...malleable.

If so, _good_ , she thinks over the nervousness, the alarming silence of her danger sense. 

* * *

But the man doesn’t return to his treasonous talk. Once she emerges from the 'fresher, he escorts her back to the room. 

”You might be tired,” he says walking ahead of her. “It’s a lot to take in, too.”

The friendly routine rankles when they both know what’s on the horizon. She forces herself to keep an appearance of calm when she finds herself shifting her weight from one foot to the other, but ends blurting out, “What happens now that you’ve told me the _truth_?”

An outburst. A mistake.

 _Smart talk is not so smart from a bleeding mouth_ , Raice had said, his dark eyes flinty. _You remember the holos of your last instructor. How they killed him? Don't be smart. Be cunning._

Mara closes her eyes. She has to do better than this.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the man is repeating. They're back in the room and he turns to face her “I’m a--” He stops himself and repeats. “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

“I believe you.” She doesn’t mean it, of course, but she manages an earnest inflection to the words as she opens her eyes, hoping he didn’t notice her earlier sarcasm. “Just that -- a day, was it? I crash landed and now I’m here and you’ve told me all these things...” She lets her voice trail off, as if she's confused.

He frowns, a second of a pause and he says, “I can tell when you lie.” Another pause, a longer one. Mara senses some internal battle. 

And then, just like that, it resolves: “I’m a Jedi.”

* * *

Of course Mara knows about Jedi. Their hypocrisy, their cravenness. A poison at the very heart of the dying Republic.

“It was a group of them,” her master had once recounted several years ago as they walked around Silica Pond in the Gardens, their favorite path by far, “sent to ambush me. They almost succeeded.” He’d raised a hand to his face. “If it weren’t for Lord Vader. It was...very painful.”

It had certainly looked that way to Mara from the sagging, scarred skin and sunken eyes to the yellow irises, all speaking of horror. Mara had been fearful for a time when she looked at them. She’d been a callow, stupid child. Now the deformities on her master’s face only conjure a fierce desire to step between he and whoever would consider striking. 

Like those lightsaber-wielding _traitors_. Mara had looked at the glittering water of the pond, the stone bridge that crossed from one side to the other. To dare confront her master, who used the Force for _sight_. The people themselves had chosen him.

“How could Jedi oppose the will of the people?”

“Yes, well,” her master had taken a seat on a bench and gestured for her to sit beside him, “A sufficient amount of bloodshed moves all but the strongest wills. I imagine at some point one or more of their remnants will return for vengeance. Perhaps they are already close, waiting.”

Mara had frowned as she sat. The Old Republic had been a den of vipers, she'd thought.

Courtiers had been ambling about the Garden in the distance, none the wiser to the threats that amassed outside the Palace...and within. Mara squinted in the direction of the various visitors. But truly, any one of those luxuriantly dressed aristocrats could be a traitor plotting against her master, against the very Empire that granted them safety and status. They were allowed here, nonetheless; on some special days her master even allowed regular citizens to enjoy the Gardens. A gift to them.

"Fortunately, Lord Vader is ready and willing to meet them," he had said beside her.

To think there were still those who would wish him ill, who would long for the return of dark days...

Beings were wretched ingrates.

“I will too, master," she had murmured. "As soon as you find me ready.”

He had laid a gentle a hand on her head. “My child.”

* * *

“You can’t be,” she nearly gasps, “The Jedi are all gone.”

And yet...it makes perfect sense, the way the man had seen her moves before she made them, read her thoughts -- Jedi could do that, couldn’t they? And her danger sense remains suspiciously silent. Had he done something to it? To her? Through the Force? To her growing alarm Mara finds she doesn’t know what Jedi can do. That they have the Force is the extent of it, that they attacked her master in a bid for power. Her own training in matters of the Force is still rudimentary at best, limited to focusing exercises and her danger sense. Her danger sense--

 _One or more of their remnants will return for vengeance_... 

Mara skitters back before she stops herself, her heart nearly pounding out her chest.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the man -- the Jedi -- repeats, slowly raising his hands. “That’s not going to change.” He spreads his hands. “I’m unarmed. You’ve been...misinformed about Jedi, too.”

“What do you want?” she says huskily. He might not have a lightsaber, but the way he'd disarmed her in the kitchen made it clear that doesn’t matter.

“Only to correct all that misinformation. I don’t want any information from you. I’m not going to take you to the Rebellion. I know you have no reason to trust me, but you have nothing to fear from me.” He flashes her a smile that looks oddly self-deprecating. “You’ll get sick of hearing that.”

She swallows. Revenge...through her. To poach her talents? Questions proliferate in her mind. How can he know? Knowing she's an imperial agent is one thing. Knowing about her Force talent is another. He _can't_ know. 

“You won’t take me to the Rebellion, so we stay...here?” she asks. He must have done something to her danger sense. He has to know then. Or was it the crash? Her thoughts circle and circle. Calm down, she tells herself. This is the contingency you've trained for.

“For a time. It’s safer. There’s a growing Imperial presence in Myrra."

Mara knows this. The troops are there because the Satrap had requested them against dissidents. Her master had been skeptical and only agreed because it would make it easier to send Mara among them. It'd been what Raice called a _periodic clean up_. So it's not that the Jedi's not taking her to his Rebellion, she pieces up. He’s simply waiting for the right time to do so. To attempt to convert her to his cause first, starting with a soft approach...To turn her against her master in the long run, use her for vengeance in some way. 

"After it eases we'll have more leeway to figure out where to go -- you'll have several options.”

Mara stares at him. "Options."

"None of those include taking you to the Rebellion or harming you in any way," he assures her. It's such an obvious lie even without her danger sense she's struck speechless. 

Disappointment crosses his face.

“We can talk about that later. When you get hungry for dinner," he continues, "just say so. I thought you'd rather rest here, but you can go to the living room if you like...whatever you're most...comfortable with.”

She forces words into her mouth. “Here -- here is fine. I am a little tired.” It's not quite a lie. To be safe, she adds a “thank you.”

He flashes her an uneasy look, but leaves, closing the door behind him. 

Instantly Mara jumps into a full scan of the room, starting with the bed. She finds new sheets on it, a light cream color as she flips the mattress looking for anything she can make into a tool. She goes to the small armoire, and looks in it again. She examines the plain tunic sets, all long sleeved, finds underclothes, socks, a pair of boots. Like what she's wearing, everything is too large in size. 

Panic winds in the pit of her belly suddenly impossible to ignore. Why is her danger sense silent? What has he done to her? What else does he mean to do to her? 

She wraps her arms around herself, feeling out of breath, her heart racing. He can't have done much if she still wants escape this strongly. Options, he'd said, meaning recant or else, and if she can’t pretend and if she won’t be turned into a traitor she _will_ end in a rebel cell, no matter what he says. Her thoughts keep coming back to being handed off, to gruesome image after gruesome image. Her focus cracks. Mara lowers herself to the ground to a sitting position.

 _The most important tool you have_ , her master has told her time and again, _is your focus. It is the foundation for everything_.

So as she sits down, she imagines his gravelly voice. _Forget your self. There is none. There is nothing._

Mara closes her eyes. “Nothing,” she whispers. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.”

There's a second part to this once everything stops moving.

 _Visualization_ , he’d said, _is a matter of filling the spot you emptied. Fill it with ambition. Passion. That which burns brightest within you._

Escape. And she visualizes standing and opening the door. She imagines walking out, a blaster in hand. Head shots. Two. Slumped body at the end of the hall. Stepping over it to cross the kitchen. An open door and and the world outside. Her ship. Her lightsaber.

She cradles the images in her head.

“Does it matter if what you see is unrealistic?” she’d asked once.

He’d given her a kindly smile. “No, the images are a means, the ends is different.”

“What are the ends?”

He’d shaken his head. “That, I will allow you to ponder.”

Mara had figured it out several months after she’d passed her eighth rank. Her opponent, a girl from the Royal Academy, build much larger than hers, was down in the mats just as she’d imagined her to be over long nights before the assessment. 

The ends was _power_. Accessing her master’s power lodged within her, what she thinks of as the _seed_ of it, though it's not something that can be fully put into words. The problem is she doesn't understand the connection between it and these visualizations. Tapping into it doesn't always work. When she’d asked her master, his answer had been hard to understand.

_The answer, like everything, lies within. For now, it is sufficient that you learn to empty yourself to fill yourself with strength. Let ambition bring you clarity. Everything will follow from that point in due time._

Mara cracks her neck, standing up. No solution is apparent, but she can’t keep sitting, swimming in images of mangled bodies in cells. She goes over the room yet again.

* * *

The knock sounds at the door as her head is buried deep within the armoire. This has been her most detailed sweep of the room yet. She’s left no nook or cranny unsearched.

As the knock sounds again, Mara takes one look at the state of the room -- the drawers on the floor, the tunics spread all over -- and blurts out, “In a minute!” while trying to reorder everything as best as she can. 

She opens and the Jedi’s eye passes over her shoulder. His face takes on a tinge of resignation as if he knows exactly what she'd been up to despite how she'd cleared everything away. She might have taken too long. Another mistake.

“It’s pretty late, I thought you might want dinner and maybe...lost track.”

She gains nothing from starving herself. Mara nods, making sure to thank him again, and follows him back to the living room where the light fixtures are on.

He makes inane conversation about the food in Akiva, something called a florakeet, an avian whose eggs are part of the diet around these parts. Mara scrutinizes the Jedi as he talks. He’s not a native. His coloring is wrong for the human settlers here. The planet is a hodgepodge from what she recalls, like most in the Outer Rim, a mix of humans, near humans, and trading species, all daring and stupid in equal measure, and the planet’s non-human primitives. It reminds her that she doesn’t know where she is exactly.

“What is this area called?” she interjects in one of his pauses. Boeher Mountains, he’d said, but what's the region? Maybe that way she could pin down how close she is to Myrra. Her eyes drift towards the transparisteel of the door, the panel blaring red. They slide over the windows next. The woods outside are dark, the inside of the cabin a clear reflection in the glass.

It’s started raining outside. Mara can't see it from the windows, but it's audible even through the environmental controls. She recalls Akiva gets a lot of rain, even outside of the rainy season proper, which ends the planetary year. So much rain, that Myrra has ladders on top of their buildings for the inevitable flash flooding that tends to occur.

The Jedi’s heating a mealpack in the kitchen, but her question makes his head turn sharply in her direction.

“Classified?” Mara guesses, with a tilt of her head she can’t restrain and immediately regrets.

He smiles a little. “No, not at all. This area is called Naalol.”

Mara rummages in her memory. Naalol. The documents listed a mountain village by that name. East of Myrra. Depending on how high up they are it’s probably an hour by speeder? Half a day or so on foot, but she's not sure.

“And the crash site?” Her lightsaber. The memory _aches_.

“Upmountain,” he tells her, placing the mealpack before her. “But there’s not much there other than talpini clans--”

“Would you take me?” She makes herself sound as earnest as possible though she knows the answer. “Since my things are there and I'm staying here...”

The Jedi hesitates again as he brings in his own meal to the table. “Everything is gone. It's not worth the trip.”

She stirs the mealpack. Some stew this time. 

Mara lowers her eyes as he sits. “I'd still like to see it.”

“Also...," he sighs, "I want to avoid the complications of you in open space that far. It’s clear that you’ll try to escape the first chance you get. Understandable, but to save us that...unpleasantness, it would be better for you to settle into things here. As much as possible.”

She narrowly avoids gaping at him. Settle into things? He must think her an idiot child.

The Jedi changes the subject to more inanity -- something about the different dwellings in this region -- and Mara’s thoughts swirl. She forces herself to finish the food and pushes off from the table once she’s done. He stops talking.

“If I may be excused, I think I’d like to go to sleep now,” she announces, standing. On second thought, she adds, “If that’s all right.”

A weird expression crosses his face. He gets it every time she thanks him. “You don't have to be so formal."

She makes herself nod at him, and goes to change. Her last pass at the 'fresher yields nothing of use. The rain has stopped. Mara sees something shimmering past the veranda in the dark outside when she stands on the tub's rim to look through the window. Moonlight?

Tiredness suddenly weighs her down as she steps from the rim to the floor of the 'fresher. Two days ago she’d been on the _Stalwart_ 's bridge as a high ranking Imperial agent, the captain had been forced to call her _Emperor's Hand_ and supply her with all the resources she requested despite looking to be more than two decades older than her. He’d hated it, utterly despised her, and she’d been glad. Her master had always said the resentment of underlings was the reality of being exceptional.

But a prisoner wasn’t exceptional, especially not one who was simply a pawn for revenge.

The Jedi is outside waiting for her when she comes out. 

"I’m not that comfortable with leaving you full reign of the house at night--” He gestures her to the room.

She has to figure this out.

The Jedi is still yammering apologetically about locking her in for the night, about showing her the outside of the cabin, the garden plot tomorrow. Mara can only think about time. She has until he realizes she won’t turn a traitor. It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone back to the topic and pressed her to justify all that the rebels smear on the Empire. It's probably all part of an elaborate head game. That's what this all is.

Does he know he is destined to fail? she thinks as she waits for him to finish. Can he read it in her thoughts? The idea is too frightening to consider for long.

Mara barely registers when he leaves and the door closes.

She looks about the room again. It’s time for another pass.

* * *

Mara’s learned about captivity from her tutors and instructors. She’d been told about the way the hours can lengthen into tedium as the days begin to unfold. 

The night is long and broken up by fitful sleep. Morning comes with a couple of soft knocks at the door, but the Jedi doesn't come in. Mara dresses and slinks out of the room, hating the creaky floorboards that announce her movements. The Jedi is not outside her door, nor the hall. She hears movement in the kitchen, and that mystery solved, she goes into the 'fresher. 

After, she walks to the kitchen and is offered breakfast, bread and some sort of eggs. The florakeet eggs, the Jedi had mentioned. Mara eats without comment save an answer to his inquiry of how she'd slept. He talks for both of them to fill the ensuing silence, about possible meals given what he has on hand. It's bizarre, but less so once Mara reminds herself it's a strategy.

She spends most of the day surreptitiously studying the cabin -- there’s not much to the living area and kitchen. Some time after breakfast the Jedi outside for something and she goes through the kitchen cabinets, searching for a knife. She doesn’t get too far before he returns, placing some materials on the kitchen counter -- a sack of some ingredient, a container of another, nothing she can readily use. Her eye goes to the cleaning droid across the room, but she can’t properly inspect it if the Jedi is around.

The goal of prolonged captivity, she knows, is to deaden the body and the mind. The Jedi hasn’t gone back to his treasonous talk, though bits sneak in every so often. He’d handed her a datapad shortly after he came back in, mentioning something about them both going outside later.

Drawn by the possibility of a comm chip, Mara takes the datapad greedily and goes to the sofa to examine it, covertly nearing the cleaning droid at one of the shadowy corners of the living room. She knows a couple of basic slices if the comm chip is disabled, but functional. Rummaging in it, she almost hisses at finding that the datapad’s comm chip is absent altogether. 

She turns to datapad's library -- maybe there's a map to be found. While searching, she sees basic histories, a few folders with bestselling holos from the past years -- a standard general entertainment package, Mara knows about but has never been exposed to for its frivolity. A trickle of curiosity snakes into her and she mercilessly squashes it. She's not about to rot her brain with it, especially now.

What isn't standard is an unnamed archive she finds when she digs a little more. Her brows draw together. Personal accounts and several holos from the look of them. Her eye travels over the titles. The personal accounts are titled by place and date, like _Velmor 2.2_ about some deposed King as some sort of martyr for speaking out against the Empire, or _Kishi 4.7_ , about some infestation healed by some local magicians from the north of that planet. Mara's vaguely familiar with the Kishi Incident though it had happened about a decade ago. It was a terrorist attack, and obviously, no magicians had existed. One of the holo titles seals it. It's _Caliper_ , probably the most infamous holo from last year -- made more so after being banned by the IBC. Deservedly so, it's over the top trash about the razing of the B'ankora refuge in Coruscant. Mara is holding rebel propaganda in her hands. 

Another strategy? To put this before her in an indirect attempt to draw her sympathy? Mara toggles away in disgust, scowling at the Jedi sitting on the table, his back to her, head bowed over his own datapad. She'd read about the B'ankora relocation through the _real_ documents alongside a tutor, given the outcry, who had guided her through all the dense bureaucratic terminology. It'd been a policy change born out of efficiency and security concerns, but of course those kinds of complexities were absent in manufactured drama for the shallow masses. The Jedi’s technique might work with the gullible and ignorant, she is neither.

She leans back. Could _pretending_ to be swayed work?

_I can tell when you lie._

Mara shifts on the sofa, suddenly restless. Deaden the body and mind. Her hands itch to examine the cleaning droid. It's an old model. She doesn't dare do more than look at it. Not while the Jedi's here.

Frustration chokes her. She stands, making herself ignore the Jedi's eyes on her when the floorboards creak as she walks. She goes to the room, closes the door and institutes an exercise routine for herself. The Jedi might have said something about taking her outside but Mara’s not counting on it. The activity keeps some of the anxiety at bay.

The knock comes when she’s almost done, the Jedi offering lunch and to show her around the outside after. She repins her hair, remembers her thank yous and goes. Lunch is another mealpack, packed grain with meat and dehydrated vegetables. Mara's only thinking of the outside. Finally, she's done and crossing out to the veranda into the muggy air. The Jedi is in front of her going on some tangent about the seasons. Thinking to buy herself good will, Mara asks a question or two as if she cares. She even tries some questions on the datapad's nonsense, but his skepticism is clear as day when she does and she drops the subject quickly. 

Feigning won't work, she decides, she's only arousing suspicion. Only escape.

Down the veranda there’s steps that lead to more open space. A speeder takes up most of the area to the right of the house. Tri-wing, closed cockpit, it's a model she doesn't recognize. The Jedi gestures her to the left side of the house and to the back. There’s a small garden plot there. 

“We can’t live out of mealpacks,” he says and smiles like it’s a joke, going on and on about what he's growing and its uses. Mara fakes a polite smile and wonders if she can get her hands on a pesticide or some other toxic material. A traitor’s blue face pops into her mind and she pushes it aside.

The Jedi’s smile has faded. He’s gone further into some meandering monologue on Akivan fruits and vegetables. Nothing she can use, so it’s just noise to Mara as she strains her eyes towards the winding trees bound behind the cabin. How far is Naalol from here?

They’re back before long and Mara resumes her scrutiny of the datapad, stiffens when the Jedi approaches where she sits on the sofa, but it's just to crouch to program the cleaning droid. He frowns at the access screen and takes it to his room. Something didn't work, she guesses. The tools must be in there since she hasn't seen them anywhere else. When he leaves outside with some clothes, she dashes to the door, works the old-fashioned knob. Locked. Predictable.

She goes back to the sofa and continues looking through the datapad as if nothing's amiss for the few minutes until he returns. The laundry droid is in the cabin's sublevel, he'd told her earlier, but he hadn't offered to show her. Mara purses her lips. She should have asked to see that part of the cabin; there might be something useful. Irritation scratches at her. She keeps making mistakes.

Evening falls and her mind feels overfull. She needs to nail down the Jedi’s comings and goings, needs to figure out a way to pick the lock to his room. She sneaks a glance at him as he putters around the kitchen. Does he know what she’s planning? 

Can he read her mind as the tales say?

Dinner is another mealpack, root vegetables with the cheese from the first meal she had and more dehydrated vegetables, but it's supplemented by some sort of simple flatbread he's made. The Jedi drones on about the different sorts of flours. Somehow he moves on to a discussion of the various soils in the region.

He stops and gives her another one of those odd sad smiles. A slight pause and he offers, “It’s not what you’re used to, is it?”

Mara isn’t sure what he’s referring to, maybe it’s a test to see if she's listening. “You would have to do something during the wet season. Too much moisture is just as bad as too little of it.”

He leans back slightly, and she can't read his expression. Confusion?

It’s not really a difficult observation. As she stands and throws out her plate into the special biodegrad compost bin he showed her, Mara wonders if he's surprised. She’s been taught the difference between hearing and listening. The Jedi can’t be able to read her thoughts, she decides. More study is necessary.

After the room is locked for the night she scratches out the paint from an area behind her bed for the second day. Keeping track of the days is basic. Deaden the body and deaden the mind. Mara looks at the two scratches on the wall. Not without a fight.

* * *

Two days turns to five with a similar routine. She mostly plots, has combed and scoured through every inch, every floorboard of the whole of the room. The window is jammed as she thought with some resin. If she had a lockpick, knife, some other tool, she could try to work out the jam by scraping at the material or cracking it. Based on how the window moves when she pulls, she’s reasonably confident it wouldn’t take long, but she has no tools. Five days in, she still hasn't found anything to use. 

She could try to break off a piece of a cabinet, to try to smash out the bedframe but that would only call undue attention, even if it were a workable solution. It might come to that.

But not yet, so she keeps searching and thinking, visualizes her escape tirelessly, digging within herself for her master’s voice, the memory of it. It helps whenever the unease gets the best of her and she feels like she can’t hold still among the torrent of hellish images. They infiltrate her sleep, and she wakes with a start several times a night, her heart hammering in her chest. It's all she can do not to scream at the Jedi to shut up when he assures she has nothing to be afraid of. All that lying coupled with whatever he did to her danger sense just makes everything worse. The semblance of compliance, she tells herself, digging her nails into her palms. She won't ask about her danger sense. There is more than one way to play an idiot child.

This is all test, she tells herself. Her resolve. How well she’s taken to her lessons. If she should pass it she is certain to make her master proud. She'd have earned her place. 

The Jedi means to keep her for two weeks or so, maybe three, Mara has calculated, if he’s waiting for troop levels in Myrra to go down. That's how much support her master promised the Satrap.

Those weeks then, must be about as long as the Jedi’s giving himself to turn her into a traitor. The whole endeavor underestimates her and her master to the point of insanity, but it shouldn't even surprise her. This is why there's no reasoning with rebels, only the swift hand of justice. 

Over lunch on the fourth day, the Jedi proceeds to make the usual idle chitchat. By now the mealpacks have been phased out. He cooks himself in keeping with the elaborate head game. The meals are simple affairs of fatbread, vegetables, and stewed legumes, bland, but edible. You dismiss this manipulation at your peril, Mara reminds herself. The next thing you know you're being handed off, a bag over your head, wondering why you didn't fight as hard as you should have. She's stopped pinning her hair up and started wearing it in two short braids. Her options for playacting are slim if he can read truth from lie in her words, but a good cover is more than just lines. She only needs a little bit of carelessness. 

Future trips to the market for supplies become a favored topic of conversation for the Jedi. The nearest settlement is not Naalol at all apparently, it's called Nialin and by speeder it should be twenty to thirty minutes away. No easy way to reach it on foot, Mara gathers with a sinking heart. It's a small quasi-town with less than a thousand inhabitants, set up maybe a couple of decades ago. When Mara asks for a specific timeline for this bestowed visit to Nialin, the Jedi predictably declines to make an estimate.

"When you're more settled." Of course, Mara scoffs inwardly. When she's a good little traitor.

Outside Nialin, the Jedi's talking continues to be irrelevant and useless. Preservation techniques for comestibles, different preparation techniques for Akivan dishes, the Jedi just talks and talks and talks. Mara doesn’t allow herself discourtesy, but keeps to succinct answers if he asks her something. He rarely does. His one-sided conversations contain a lot of background knowledge about all sorts of trivialities.

Like the datapad, the daily supervised outings around the outside of the cabin, the assurances of her safety -- all a friendly jailer routine, top to bottom, some sort of carefully concocted plan to lure her into complacency, ensnare her to receptivity through indirect means. All for the sake of turning her against her master. Revenge, she reminds herself.

In a rush of anger that he think her stupid to all of this, she says during dinner on the fifth day, “But you _are_ with the rebels.” 

It may have been a non sequitur because the Jedi blinks at it. Mara has gone over the history she knows time and again. Jedi fought in the Clone Wars, but this man looks too young -- he couldn’t have been a teen at most then. 

“At one time I was," he finally says, “a while back I...” he appears to look for a word and can’t find it, settles for, “left.” 

Deserter? But that couldn't be. Several years ago, there was no Rebellion to speak of, just a collection of disparate cells in the Outer Rim, some more bloodthirsty than others, nothing to desert from, really. Last year though, Mara clenches her teeth at the memory, one of the cells managed to secure the the liberation of Lothal, and there were whispers of swiftly growing numbers, of gathering discontent in the Mid Rim. It makes no sense. Why would this Jedi leave his comrades _now_ of all times?

“Why?” escapes her.

“Sick of fighting,” he replies with a lopsided smile. 

She frowns. Cowardly.

“I...well, I believe in what they fight for -- for a time that was enough.” He meets her eyes and she gets the sense that there’s a lot of information he’s skipping. “And then other things became more important than fighting.”

Another story to gain her cooperation while he waits for his friends. Why had she said anything? His eyes set on her expectantly as if he's waiting for her to ask more, but she continues eating in silence. Maybe she should ask, but he'd see right through it anyway. He moves on to some other harmless topic. 

Damn that infiltrator, she thinks later that night, tossing in bed. Whoever it is has to be part of her master’s inner circle. Very few people know about her -- not even Lord Vader knows yet, only her instructors and her master had handpicked them. It couldn’t be them, so then who?

That bloodsucking traitor. In betraying her, her mission to rid the Empire of the Satrap is left incomplete. Her master might think she'd suffered an accident, a fool's death. Is the reality better? Her imprisonment, her coming interrogation once she refuses to recant? 

_In a sea of stones, you are a gem_ , her master had said, and the memory cuts through that sickening feeling of dread. If that's just the power of a memory, what would it be like to be able to hear his voice, truly hear his voice a galaxy over? From _anywhere_. That is only the beginning of all she can do, he's told her, all she can be at his side.

She just has to earn it.

Mara looks out the darkened window to the usual glimmering beyond the veranda. She still hasn't figured out what it is. Fireflies? She settles back on the bed. Prove myself by saving my own life. 

Her master doesn't need some sniveling child crying to him at the first sign of trouble.

* * *

The sixth day is more of the same. Still no way to pick the lock for the Jedi's bedroom. The cleaning droid could have a possible use, but the Jedi’s yet to leave her alone with it.

That night she tries the window to the far side of the room where she sleeps again. These past few days, she’d focused solely on the one she could reach from the bed. This other window has no furniture around it; she can only reach it if she stands on her toes, and only the lower half. When she pushes against the window pane, it tilts outward like a drawbridge, but stops all too soon. The resulting gap narrows at a sharp angle, so shoving her arm in is awkward. She can’t really see either since it’s close to a foot above her head. 

But after some pushing, Mara feels the give of the bug screen and the solidity of the bottommost rail. She pushes some more along the rail and...more give. Her eyes widen, cautious optimism seeping into her.

Could it be?

She pushes against it again -- how could she have missed this? More give, less than the bug screen, something more solid. She's pushing the window rail.

And it moves.

Mara smiles. 

Through the bug screen she feels the bar on the window is slightly loose. 

_Patience_ , her master has said to her, _is always rewarded_.

Mara pulls her arm away. It's a little sore from being in the unnatural position for too long, but she barely notices. She can’t get the railing completely loose tonight and she needs to tear through the bug screen first. Too late to work it out now. Tomorrow she'll be sharper.

Something within her unfurls as she slides into bed, some of the days' tension easing. She visualizes herself walking down her master’s throne room, the clip of her boots on the pristine floors, dropping to one knee before him. His approval would wash over her even before she spoke.

“My lord, I bring you something better than the Satrap, news,” she would say, bowing her head. “Of a Jedi remnant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IBC should be censors. Stands for Imperial Board of Culture.


	4. Chapter 4

##### III. Tools

  


* * *

  
2.16  


There are traces of a dark crust that must have covered the gigantic crystal. 

  * Was it in a pod, or buried somewhere? ~~A world only the Jedi knew?~~
  * Who polished it?

* * *

  


On the seventh night, boot in hand, Mara jabs and jabs at a section of the bug screen. After painstaking effort, the material gives, the tip of the boot going through. She punches through the bug screen further, tearing through the wire mesh. Finally, she lowers the boot and reaches up, the screen's metal edges catching on the sleeves of her tunic as she pushes her hand out, lightly scratching the top of her palm.

Mara angles her hand up towards the loosened bar. It wriggles a bit when she pushes, her hold now unhampered by the screen. The bar is still affixed. Wait, has she just tripped some sophisticated alarm system hooked up to the enviro controls?

She pulls her arm back from the window, pulse pounding in her ears, her whole body rigid. The Jedi could be on his way here _right now_. Her breathing begins to speed up. She has to be cunning -- on the event there is an alarm, it might not give him specifics. If he finds her in bed, he might think it was something else. 

Mara quickly closes the window, turns off the light and goes back to bed. Her body is thrumming with anxious anticipation. At any moment, the Jedi will burst through the door. She visualizes moving against him in her head to calm herself down. How he’d shake her shoulder to wake her, and she’d use the proximity and crouched position to grab his head and smash it against the bedframe again and again, leaving him bloody, earning her enough time to run out. 

He doesn't show up. Morning comes after fitful sleep, the pattern uninterrupted, the door unlocked, and the Jedi making noise in the kitchen as she goes to the ‘fresher. She sneaks sidelong glances down the hall as she cautiously emerges from the room. Her time in the ‘fresher continues undisturbed.

As he puts her plate before her once she ambles in, he repeats tediously that he means her no harm, and lapses into a largely one-sided conversation about the importance of trade, random and boring as all his topics are. The day passes uneventfully though she's in high alert, betraying herself somehow because the Jedi repeats even more than usual that he means her no harm. She salvages an an important data point; Jedi don’t seem to be able to read minds, at least not in this context. 

The routine holds for the next days. She wakes, dresses, forces herself to go out and be subjected to the Jedi’s droning over breakfast. He leaves her on her own after that to tend to the plot. He’ll be back in a half an hour, time she uses to pore over the living room and the kitchen, since his room is locked. Even in a relatively sparse and small space, half an hour is not a lot of time to do anything but figure out that useful implements _are_ kept in the kitchen, but under passcode lock. She checks them as often as she can, but the cabinet with flammables is still locked, the cabinet with the knives is still locked, the oven's child lock mechanism still enabled time and again.

Given his activity in the kitchen, Mara maintains hope of sudden carelessness. She’s palmed several packets of protein paste and polystarch with an eye to how she’ll feed herself when she escapes and palms some more now. She'll hide them inside the pillowcase with the rest and use that as a sack when she escapes. It's an inevitability now that the railing is loose.

She uses the long hours between meals to study the datapad, there's a couple of Old Core texts she recognizes, being Old Core they're not easy reading which suits her fine. She's chooses _Arrowhead_ , half between a history and a holonovel, it traces the origins of the worlds that make up the inner core. When that gets too much, which happens too quickly, she goes to the room, turns to the exercise regimen she’s cobbled together for herself. After, she stares through the window, memorizing the landscape, visualizing escape, imagining her master's pride at her success, the warmth of his approval.

Mara alternates between the living room and the room she sleeps in to avoid a set pattern, in her mind she wears down a path between them like a trail. Obviously, she'd like to keep to the room where she sleeps and away from the Jedi's eyes and talk, but she'd be a fool to miss any opportunity to find something she can use. With the way the Jedi talks, it's only a matter of time before he gives something up.

The downsides to the living room is precisely that -- the Jedi's talk has inched to treasonous as the days go by. She pretends to be absorbed in her reading, but inevitably when she straightens up, or shifts position he'll take it as an opening to launch into some monologue about sanctioned corruption in supply chains, inequitable policies, excessive force, and so on. Mara's not stupid; these are all charges at the Empire couched in jargon that might not seem radical, but is. She never responds, wary she'll harm the semblance of compliance.

Boredom sneaks in no matter where she spends her time or what she does. Despite her efforts, the days are long, absent the clarity that her missions or training had. The unknowns suffocate her: When will the Jedi give up hope of changing her mind and take her to his rebel friends? Or will they come here? Will she manage to escape in time?

When she can't take the questions she goes and sits in the room, digs within herself, digs, digs to that far corner of where she can almost hear her master, an operation hampered by her exhaustion. More than once she’s woken by the Jedi’s knock at the door for dinner, after she’s accidentally fallen asleep, much to her chagrin and growing apprehension. Worse, sometimes she zones clean out when she's supposed to be paying attention while he rambles. She's sure he's noticed. If she keeps this up he'll wonder at the degree of her activity at night.

Mara spends her nights, nearly the whole of them, in the laborious task of loosening the window bar. The rail on the window past the bug screen is precariously attached. She imagines it slightly rusted at both edges, the wear and tear of time and weather on it. Mara needs it fully detached. Only then can she have an opening big enough to push herself out -- once she gets rid of the jam that prevents the window from opening fully, that is. She can tackle that better with the metal railing as a tool. Two hawkbats, one shot.

For now, pulling out the railing is a repetitive push-pull-push. After a few minutes, her arm sores up and she has to draw it from the window and stretch it. Her shoulder aches from the awkward positioning, but she goes back to it before long. She does it for hours, thinking her life depends on this, only stops to stretch her arm, give it a rest before returning to her task. She makes herself think of the things she'd long tried not to, the smeared blood on duracrete, the sounds of the beatings, all to ignore the pain at her arm. She does it until near dawn. It’s too risky to do it during the day.

The worst part of it comes after three days of doing this. She feels something slimy and prickly on her hand next to the hem of her tunic sleeve. When she moves her hand, whatever it is slowly slinks under her wrist.

She can’t pull her hand back fast enough and flings it out once it's inside the room. A disgusting bug, round, and a little smaller than her palm smacks against the wall, and lands on the ground a foot beside her boot. Mara tamps down on a yell and brings her foot down on it, feeling the wet burst of the insect under her heel. She lifts her boot to find a mess of slimy brown matter oozing under the sole in between shattered pieces of chitin.

Revolted, she steps away from the window and closes it. 

Mara sits on the bed. She has to go back to the window. What is she waiting for? Her life is at stake. A bug shouldn’t give her pause.

Except...bugs are not just bugs. On a jungle planet like this insects can be lethal. She knows of mandapedes whose one sting reduces a victim into a frothing stupor. It doesn’t have to be bugs either -- a simple lindra frog can condemn anyone who touches it to a painful death, limbs swelling grotesquely as they slowly asphyxiate. 

She’s delivered a similar toxin herself back at the palace and watched the traitor die a few months ago. Even knowing he’d been a filthy traitor, his death by asphyxiation, face blue as he thrashed on the floor, desperate for air for minutes, haunted her weeks afterwards.

She still hates thinking about it.

The urge to cry wells up inside her, pathetic and even more repulsive. Mara squares her shoulders. She's a waste of all her master has granted her if this reduces her to a blubbering idiot. A painful death by lindra poison is better than one on some dirty rebel cell floor after they're done with her. The Jedi himself might conduct her interrogation -- who knows what means they use. 

She refuses to think of a scenario where a simple bug bite might incapacitate her.

Mara stands and goes back to the window, opens it, and shoves her arm out, clutching the sleeve of her tunic over her hand.

* * *

Dawn is nearing when Mara hides a dirty tunic under the mattress, thinking to clean it in the ‘fresher later. She'd used it to scoop up the bug carcass and flung it out the window, as best as she could. The cleaning droid might not be a state of the art model, but it’s standard programming for maintenance droids to call attention to the remains of pests to figure out origin and the possibility of infestation. She doesn’t doubt this droid has it given where they are. She'd wiped down her boot after, now having the dirtied tunic left to deal with, she's not taking any chances.

The next days keep to the same pattern, same repetition that he won't hurt her. She tries not to show how tired she is or the pain in her arm from the hours-long repetitive motion. There’s more than a bit of swelling, and the best thing for it, she knows, would be ice, but obviously that’s out -- no way to do that without the Jedi noticing. When she's in the living room, she catches furtive glances from him when he thinks she's not looking. Sometimes his expression leans to something forlorn she can't place, and others to contemplative, increasingly shadowed by uncertainty. It's all she can do not to go and lock herself in the room. Mara focuses on her arm, the shower in the morning helps, and it does get better by the late afternoons. She modifies her exercise regimen to give it some rest.

There's a few insect bites along her wrist too, but they’re simple mosquito bites. Mara doesn’t allow herself to dwell on them or on her lack of fever pills. She doesn’t dare scratch at them in the Jedi’s presence.

The Jedi continues his inane prattling on one frivolous thing after another; he saves treasonous talk for later in the day. She responds as much as is courteous in order to convey compliance. Today’s lunch topic is apparently the specs of some backwoods airspeeder model by Incom. Having had at most two or three hours of sleep, engine specs are an even more tiresome topic than they usually are.

The airspeeder her master had cleared her to use a few months ago pops into her head, a gorgeous open cockpit M-31, firebird red. She'd used it to take herself to the Symphony and she welcomes the memory. The outing had been a reward for successfully carrying out her fifth assignment at the Palace, some moff with a loose tongue. The first one she'd done on her own, reporting to Raice after. All had gone according to plan.

Unfortunately she’d had to take Lady Foriter with her. Not only that, the dress Lady Foriter had selected for her was dowdy, squarish with thin straps and in a frumpy champagne color. Not very eye-catching -- and she'd had to leave her hair loose like a child. _Eye-catching_ would be for her debut, Lady Foriter had said in her fastidious way. It had taken a bit of the gloss away from the evening.

Her dress would be aquamarine shimmersilk next year, Mara had decided at the end of the evening, and her hair would be in an elegant updo. She wouldn't have a chaperone turning her night into an assessment of proper comportment in a society setting. Everyone would know her as part of her master's retinue, even if the details would be beyond them.

Mara's eyes focus on her flimsiplate, rice, brined vegetables, some kind of roasted legume, and her shoulders slump.

“You all right?”

She wants nothing more than to spit at the Jedi, _I see right through you_. Instead she hums something noncommittal, keeping her eyes on her food. She thinks of braised nerf with Ferroan leeks, of sun-apple cake, and forces in bite after bite. A week and six days, she thinks. Save my own life. 

“I thought we might go outside after this.”

Her head snaps up. Going outside is all the more useful now. She makes herself scrutinize the landscape during these daily outings, catalog the nearby trees. She's only been as far as the cabin's immediate surroundings. Her reaction now's a mistake though; anything you demonstrate too much enthusiasm for can find you out.

Mara quickly moves her gaze elsewhere and rubs at her face. Too many nights working on her escape instead of sleeping are catching up with her; she’s not as sharp as she wants to be. The moving shadows within the cabin don't help. She's caught herself looking at the windows and wondering if the jungle is inching forward to swallow the whole cabin up, swallow _her_ up, little by little.

She doesn’t like the Jedi’s fake concern, nor the pitying look in his eyes when she finally meets his eyes. “You’re having trouble sleeping --"

“No,” she snaps, unable to help herself, and immediately regrets it, lowering her eyes. “My sleep is fine, thank you. I would like to go outside now, yes,” she bites out. Courtesy, she tells herself. The semblance of compliance. “Please.”

Her thoughts are pulled, as always, to the traitor. Someone had known about who she was, enough to come up with a whole plan to try to turn her against her master, to hand her over to a _Jedi_. The cabin, the tunics. Her thoughts circle back. Who had talked? she asks herself as the Jedi stands and goes to the door.

She hasn’t yet undergone enough missions to gain fame -- all of the assignments she’d been on the past year, in fact, had been dependent on her invisibility. She’d carried them all out within the bounds of the palace and under Raice's eye. He would have known if her cover had been compromised.

Her master has a traitor near him. If anything, _that's_ why she must return.

Mara looks on as the Jedi inputs a code by the door, the subtle placement of his body obscuring it from view.

Once it's open she stands. He gestures her through the door. Mara steps out, the air heavy on her skin. 

“I know," he says behind her, "You don’t trust me. It's understandable." He lowers his voice to some parody of a confession. "But I wish you wouldn't be so afraid.”

Is he listening to himself? she wonders. Does this drivel work on anyone?

"Maybe once we go to Nialin," a small hopeful note sneaks in. "I do mean for us to go. I just wouldn't want you to try to get back to your handlers."

She has no handler anymore. Raice reads her reports, but it's been all flimsiwork for the last few assignments. Her master personally debriefs her now.

"Like I told you, there's nothing back there. You've been lied to."

It's the beginning of the day's treasonous diatribe. He speaks clearer treason these days. Mara generally tunes him out when he does, aiming at docility. Stupidity. 

"Even if you don't believe me, the galaxy's much bigger than the Empire. The skills you have could be used in other ways without any connection to the war. You have many other options."

There's no reasoning with traitors.

"I'm sorry you're unhappy. I am. I don't mean to keep you in this place forever. We'll start with Nialin, make it a regular visit there. After it's safe, I'll take you to Myrra. You'll be able to stay there eventually. That's a city. You'll be more comfortable."

Her head turns towards him, breath catching in her chest.

"I'm not taking you to the Rebellion, or anyone connected to the war. I swear it," he says like that means anything, expression oh-so-sincere. He pauses as if unsure before continuing, "There's several shipping companies with enough clout to work independently from the Empire -- they're not sympathizers either. They are always looking for good people and offer apprenticeships. You can see which you like."

She restrains an incredulous expression. Is he serious? Is that what all the talk about trade was about?

"It probably seems...outlandish," he says almost self-deprecatingly. "Not for now. You can just...think about it as a possibility down the line. Later on you can talk to representatives, see if you gravitate to anyone."

Is a story about taking her to work for a _shipping company_ the best he can do? The semblance of compliance, she thinks, over the urge to point out how insane it all is. To turn away from her beliefs for _this_? An insult to her very intelligence. Her character.

That's the point, it dawns on her a second later; she's supposed to be too stupid to see it. Mara looks past the veranda and tightens her lips. Maybe the braids and the silence is working.

"It's not what you're used to by a long shot, but things shift in wartime. Sometimes...in ways you don't expect. Industry, especially based here, offers more stability right now." He stops. "Do you even have an identicard? That's just one of the things a reputable company could help with. All of that -- identifications, medical records, bank accounts, would be yours, even if you decide to leave a given company. You probably haven't had a chance to think about things like that, have you?" Some awkwardness has come into his voice. 

Mara grits her teeth, caught by the first part. He can't be insinuating a band of dissidents accomplishing anything long lasting. Even Lothal will be retaken, it's only a matter of time.

There is only the Empire. There will _always_ be only the Empire.

He appears to catch a second wind. "And you'll be able to rise through the ranks quickly, I'm sure. If it's a good fit several years from now, you could be heading operations in a sector."

She stops listening as he he goes on about how the position could be prestigious.

Nialin comes up and Mara's attention returns. "You could get more of whatever you like that's on the datapad. Or something else. Next week. And like I said we'll go more frequently after. This is just temporary. By the time you're set up in Myrra you'll be on your own."

He doesn't mention the condition underneath it all -- to betray all she holds dear. And for what? It'd be laughable if it weren't so insulting.

You just watch, she dares think. My master will have you hunted down like an animal.

But she murmurs without looking back at him, "That would be nice" because it's gone too long without her offering some acknowledgement for compliance's sake.

The humidity has settled on her like a second skin and she can feel herself drenched in sweat. Vegetation is only cleared in the immediate surroundings, scarcely a few feet away a wall of it stretches up haphazardly. The area in front of the cabin doesn't have as many trees; there’s more land cleared in the front and she moves towards it. 

The airspeeder comes into view.

“I never thought I'd own one of these again. Well,” he corrects himself a few paces behind her, "this one is a little roomier, a T-26. In a place like this you need something hardier than your usual speeder. I never saw one in the Core, but they're a credit a dozen here. You ever flown one?"

Mara shakes her head, but she's only half paying attention as she looks past it. What if she sprinted to the wild mass of jungle? He would catch her, she’s certain. His knowledge of the area is better than hers. But even if she could get away, where would she go? There's more uncertainty out in the jungle.

No, she pulls herself from it. Anywhere is better than here. Eventually she’d find her way to some outpost. She can try Naalol -- it'd maybe be a couple of day's hike. She'd have to find a path behind the cabin. 

She moves past the speeder.

"The brush thickens there," he calls. "Nothing in that direction until Nialin." 

She knows that already. Mara scowls, returns to the veranda steps. She sits at them, chin propped up on her hand, feeling the Jedi's stare behind her.

* * *

After a week and six days in captivity, Mara pries one side of the bar at the window completely loose. 

She restrains her elation. There's so much more to accomplish...and yet this feels like a harbinger, a promise if what is to come.

_Do as well as you are, and I’ll further your training, develop your gift to perfection_ ,” her master had said. _One day you shall hear my voice no matter where you are._

It’s just a memory. Mara wishes she could hear her master now, but that seed of power has to be enough, a tiny part of her master lodged within her. A reminder of the future that awaits.

Now, though. Now, her escape is at hand.

Two days after, the other end of the railing comes fully loose. She pulls it from the window.

Mara looks at it, a slender metal bar maybe three inches thick, just a little longer than her forearm. A weapon. A tool.

She has never felt such a strong emotion for an object save her lost lightsaber. This metal rail is her salvation. She hides it inside her pillow.

Patience, she tells herself. Patience.

* * *

Over breakfast a day later, thinking of her lightsaber, she's asked again to visit her the wreckage of her ship. The Jedi refuses her yet again, citing the same reasons, distance and the fact there is nothing there. She knew he would, but it's become as much of a pattern as him telling her he means her no harm.

He changes the subject to the upcoming trip to Nialin in several days while Mara wonders how he knew where her ship would crash. Had he sensed her, panicked and scared, and thought it was all according to plan? The thought makes her ball her fists in her lap, pokes and prods at her all through the morning reading.

“You can’t read my mind,” she blurts out during lunch, interrupting a monologue about sublevel gardening, but he doesn't look angry. “They said Jedi could read minds.”

"They do say that," he concedes easily, with an air of relief, "But it's inaccurate. We can sense emotions, states of mind, not actual thoughts. People confuse both all the time. Your thoughts are your own.”

“Is that how you found me? In the crash.” Mara looks to the door. “Did you follow how I felt as I went down?”

He stays silent for long enough that she looks at him again. “No,” he says, an undercurrent of a weighty feeling in it. “I sensed you when you were already on the ground.” Disappointment crosses his face. “I know you don't believe me--"

"You feel that I don't?" she interrupts, careful to keep her voice level.

"I don't need to use the Force, if that's what you're asking," he says gently. "It's obvious without it." 

Mara lowers her eyes to her plate.

"I won't hurt you and I won't take you to anyone who will. I said I would take you to Nialin, you'll see I mean it. Later I'll take you to Myrra once I can, and there you'll be able to go over your options. This is just for a bit. For safety's sake. I'm not...,” he stumbles a bit, "I don't expect you to change your mind about the Empire, not now, you'll see for yourself what it is."

Mara doesn’t respond. She’s not going to jeopardize her work. Instead, she finishes her lunch, a simple meal of bread and some spread with some dried fruit. He moves on to another talk about rainstorms in Akiva, and the pattern continues. She waits, searches through the kitchen when he’s outside, keeps to her reading, her exercise regimen, her visualizations, her plotting. The time helps her arm though it’s still very sore, probably will be for a while. At least she manages to rest a bit now that she doesn't have to spend the night forcing the bar loose.

She devotes more time to cataloging the areas outside the cabin, and even considers asking to go with him outside while he tends to the plot outside. She opts against it for it being too suspicious. When he first showed it to her he'd mentioned there’s a river maybe have a mile behind cabin. Water usually means settlers. Following that river down the mountain is a good idea.

The window is another piece she turns to. After trying it a couple of times, she knows she can fully unjam the it with the railing, scraping and cracking the resin that holds the locking mechanism in place. It would probably be loud to bash and scrape out; she needs there to be some sort of distraction to keep the Jedi occupied while she escapes though. The kitchen seems like the best place to go about scrounging for a distraction, but she never gets enough time alone there.

Frustration bites at her insides, the same cold fear. It’s been more than two weeks. She has to act soon. Who knows what else awaits her? A day passes, the weather darkens as if it mirrors her mood.

On the sixth day of the second week, there’s a downpour. At some point during lunch a hard clanking sound rises above the steady drum of rain surrounding the cabin. The Jedi had just been mentioning they'd go to Nialin in the afternoon. He's more upbeat than she's seen him. It's irritating.

The clanging sound continues.

“What is that?” escapes her.

His brow knots. “I don’t know. Sounded like it came from the basement.”

“What's there?”

“Just piping...the laundry and stores -- I should check.”

And just like that the opportunity opens up. Mara watches as he leaves, stays utterly still as the panel on the door flashes red again. It’s a split second of disbelief and then she’s on her feet, rushing to the conserv and across the cabinets for one last look. Knife, knife, knife, she thinks, but there’s nothing. She grabs more packets of powdered protein, of polystarch, and a chair, dashing to the room she sleeps in. She positions the chair by the window with the railing she’d pulled out and goes to yank out her pillowcase and stuffing everything in it. 

She takes the railing from the pillow, stands on the chair and slides it in the window lock, pummeling down at the resin, seeing it crack, then shatter as the window opens completely.

Mara throws the makeshift sack outside onto the veranda. There’s only a narrow space, she barely fits, the sides of the window tight against her shoulders as she slides her legs out, but the veranda curls around this part of the house too and it’s not a far drop. She tumbles outside, landing on her hands and knees on the wood of the veranda, the air wet and smothering, grabs the sack, pushes off and over the balustrade, bolting for the trees behind the house.

The ground is muddy, imperiling her footing. The trees seem much larger up close, their interwoven branches and roots form a dense, dark labyrinth that smells like moss and stagnant water. Mara tries to hurry through it, to put distance between her and the cabin, but the thick blanket of fallen leaves on top of mud and gnarled roots slows her down, making her slip and stumble in the rain. 

Mara hears herself panting and forces herself to be quiet as she tries for a brisk pace. She trains her ears, but only hears chirring insects, the whisper of falling rain. Something scurries between broad green-yellow leaves in her peripheral vision, and Mara flinches as she trudges on, sweat streaming down her temples, her back, mixing with the drizzle. Her tunic sticks to her skin. Branches and vines catch against its sleeves, insects buzz ceaselessly around her.

Attention to your surroundings, she reminds herself, ducking to avoid the creeping vines overhead as she passes through a small space between two trees. The Jedi might know the terrain but looking for her isn’t going to be easy. She can't make it easy. 

She continues until the landscape opens up more, the trees growing sparser. Is she close to the river? There’s patchy undergrowth in front of her, spots of bright green against the ground and she can see a swath of sky overhead between the canopy of vegetation, diffused light.

Mara strains her ears, hears the squawking of birds, more insects buzzing, but can’t make out the sound of running water. If she finds the river, she tells herself, she can follow it down to Naalol, send word to the nearest garrison...

Unbidden, the image of her wrecked ship floats up in her mind. The blaster under the instrument console, her supplies. Her comm. 

Her lightsaber.

Suddenly her foot’s caught and she’s tumbling forward, soft ground under her hands. The sack falls beside her as she rolls up, pain shooting up from her ankle. A sprain? Dread stabs into her.

But as she stands, it merely twinges. Luck is in her favor. She goes to pick up her sack, a couple of protein packs fallen from it. The pillowcase is suddenly hard to see, under crawling insects -- some kind of ant -- neon yellow, as long as her index finger. She feels her face contort in disgust and leaves the sack behind, grabbing the scattered packs shoving them into the waistband of her pants. Can’t keep losing time. 

Soon she’s back to making a more cautious way through the open area. The area is full of rodent burrows, her foot must have been caught in one of them. It makes Mara wonder about what else inhabits the forest. A vine cat? A tar viper? More disgusting insects?

The railing is her only weapon.

Still, dying here with seems a far cry better than what awaits her in a rebel cell. She makes herself think of the gruesome holos. Even an excruciatingly slow death by poisonous insect or plant is better than that.

_This is what we stand against_ , her instructors have told her time and again, Bayeran, now gone, Raice, Lady Foriter, and the bevy of tutors she'd had over the years, some of whose names she doesn’t remember. She remembers their lessons, as her master said she should. This is no time for sentiment.

Her footsteps become more sure. She’ll pass this test.

Mara latches onto that seed of power. The echo of her master’s voice comes back to her, tinged with sympathy. She can almost feel the warmth of the sunlight pouring into the Gardens, feel the breeze by her cheek.

"It’s not right for your mind to be exposed to such horrors,” he’d said as they talked about the terrible things happening away from the Core, the holos her instructors had shown her. “You are still young. I would not want you afraid." 

“I have my master’s power.” She’d shaken her head. “I am not afraid. Only...angry that beings could do such horrible things -- that they should feel it is their _right_.”

He’d flashed her a curious look. “Even if they are strong?”

”The Empire is stronger.” 

Her master’s smile had been thin as if she’d said something trite. “ _You_ are stronger, my lord.”

He’d laughed softly. “An old man like me?”

“Your sight, my lord. Strength is more than power. It is discernment.”

"Very good.” He’d said with a nod.“ A valuable lesson for you, given your calling. You must have sight too.” He'd sat down slowly as if it pained him, and she'd felt a stab of worry. What must it be like to balance the fate of the galaxy on your shoulders? 

“To feel anger at such things -- it is good," he'd continued. "Sometimes we must look upon terrible things, to hold our anger towards them in order to remind ourselves of what we are.” He'd raised his scarred face towards her. "You were shown these things because your gift will not keep you a child for long. Not when you are needed.” Gently he’d asked, “You understand this?”

Mara had nodded. “I do.”

”Of course you do.” He’d smiled warmly at her. “In a sea of stones, you are a gem." 

A gem, she thinks now as she had then. I am a gem.

Mara delves deeper into the jungle.





	5. Chapter 5

##### IV. Gifts

  


* * *

2.19

Initial test notes:

  * The piezoelectric effect of the kyber synthetic was point three above
  * Early estimates are significantly larger -- given the kyber's authenticity?
  * ~~Additional cutting could be used to increase power output~~
  * Inserting light through radiation?



* * *

  


After a while the vegetation thickens yet again. It’s not as dense as it was in the cabin’s immediacy, but plenty of neon green moss-covered logs cross along her path.

Mara pushes on, not daring to stop. Her ankle is a niggling irritation, and so are the insect bites she seems to have amassed on every part of her that’s exposed, but she’s on her way to freedom, one hill at a time. Shadows lengthen under her feet. Her imagination, maybe. She doesn’t know how long she’s been walking. 

She hears a rustle of movement, and ducks behind a tree whose trunk is of a bright purple feathery substance, different from the ones near the cabin. The trees are strange-looking in this area. A few blue lianas shot through with vein-like red lines scratch at her head as she holds her breath and furtively looks around. 

Yes, there is movement from the vines and creepers in the distance. Mara turns back and squeezes her eyes closed. She digs into her sack for the window railing, cold saturating her pores.

“Mara?”

She hates her name from him, vowels rounded in nasal Outer Rim intonation. She’d never given it to him. A traitor did. A traitor who is in her master’s inner circle. She might not be able to face a Jedi, but she can face an ordinary traitor. She’s done it before.

When I return, she resolves like a prayer. I will devote all my waking hours to digging this traitor out. I will beg my master to allow me to make an example of them. The toxin victim’s blue face surfaces in her memory. Sometimes a terrible death is just.

“Mara?”

Can she run? She doesn’t dare stick her neck out to check. 

“Come out,” he calls. 

She won’t. Mara clutches the railing tighter. 

“I won’t hurt you. It’s dangerous to be here. You’re not even going in the right direction to hit the river.”

Mara stays frozen. Run, she tells herself. Run. He’s probably lying.

“There’s nothing waiting for you where you came from,” he says after a moment. “Lies. You’ve been lied to.”

Run, she tells herself even as she feels rooted to the spot.

“By the Emperor. He knows well what his people are doing. All of it is permitted, approved, at times even engineered by him.”

Finally, her feet burst into movement, desperate to reach the nearest tree for cover. A flash of a human figure at the corner of her eye, and she’s off to the next tree and the next, visualizing blaster fire. The usual exercise. Mara thinks she sees a muddy ravine coming up. She’s good at this.

Another sprint, her muscles working, her mind focused, so close. Without warning, there he is. She takes a step back, slamming back against the trunk of a tree. He approaches and his hand darts out. Mara half turns, swinging the railing up. The impact she’s expecting doesn’t come. Her danger sense _screeches_ \--

His left hand latches onto her wrist while with his right grabs something from a branch overhead. A smacking sound and a hiss fill the air as a wriggling mass slithers away, bright purple disappearing through the cracked leaves on the ground. She'd barely registered the return of her danger sense before it's gone silent again, but her empty hand draws her attention.

Somehow he’s gotten the railing away from her.

“Lance viper.” The Jedi drops his hand and taking a step back. He grabs her sack, which had fallen beside her. “Let’s go back.”

Mara sets her mouth. “No." She darts forward.

The firm grip on her arm stops her, the Jedi's voice urgent and reproving, “You have no supplies, and you’re going the wrong way. That snake could have--”

She pulls her arm, tries to yank it away, to shift and squirm out of his grasp, brings her loose arm into a strike. It’s all futile, and before she knows it, her arms are locked in a tight hold behind her back. 

“You'll never convert me to your cause!” she screams, her voice piercing through the trees as he tugs her forward. “Never!”

“I'm not here for that."

Over the pounding of her pulse, she hisses, “I’m not afraid to die” and plants her feet. 

A harder pull has her taking a step. “I keep telling you--”

She tries to jostle his hold, but ends being half dragged forward. “My master will _exterminate_ you, like he did with all of--”

“I think,” he sets their path through the terrain, alternating pushing her and yanking her forward, “he’s busy.” The Jedi breaks off to pull her back from a river of the yellow ants she'd seen crossing the ground in front of her. “With other...” they come across a section that seems impassable to Mara, but then she feels the thrum of the Force and vines and creepers slide away, clearing a path for them to pass. She recoils, another chill running down her spine. She hasn’t seen such a flagrant display of his powers before. “...matters at the moment.” 

He focuses enough to look at her and adds, face a mask of solemnity, “But you don’t mean anything to him. Anything else he’s told you is lie.”

“You wouldn’t know,” she snarls. Better anger than the spilling panic. What would a Jedi know about service to something greater? Traitors and liars. “You don’t know a damn thing.” She lets herself fall forward, almost bringing him down with her. At the last moment he negotiates the shift in weight and Mara finds herself, held up by an unseen hold, impossibly unable to fall, even as she's incongruously dipping forward enough she should.

She can't _move_.

The Jedi peers down at her. “Will you walk or should I carry you?”

When she says nothing, the pressure eases. Mara tries to scramble up and away, but his hold at her arms keeps as he pulls her back. A clink rings out. She's barely registered her wrists cuffed behind her back as he hauls her over his shoulder in one quick movement, one arm wrapped just above her knees. She struggles and thrashes the whole way, but her feet don’t hit the ground until they’re back at the cabin.

Once there, the Jedi leaves her at the sofa, while he goes to the room. To ransack it, she thinks jumping up, eye roving over the room. What happens now? 

How much time does she have left?

The Jedi goes into his room, emerging scant minutes later and heading back to the room she sleeps with something in hand, tools probably. Mara drops into a sitting position on the sofa, but he doesn't look at her, too focused on his task. 

Her stomach clenches. What happens now? Punishment? Even though she knows it’s useless she dives towards the kitchen. Maybe the frying pan? It's _something_. She drops by the cabinet, her back to it, where he keeps the pots and pans, back to the cabinets, feeling blindly for the handle with her cuffed hands, gets it open, and feels for --

"What are you doing?"

She startles.

He's standing by the table, looking at where she's crouching, back to the open cabinet. He doesn't appear angry, only confused.

Mara shoots to her feet so fast she almost loses her balance. The idea of getting a pan as a weapon, is now ludicrous, especially in her cuffed state. Her breath stalls in her chest. Nothing's coming to her. Her thinking's muddled. She can't--

The Jedi gestures to the chair she routinely uses, then puts a tube of something on the table. “Ointment.”

Mara swallows hard over the throbbing pulse at her throat.

The Jedi pulls his chair out, sits and looks over to her.“For the bites. You have some..." he gestures to the side of his face. "I'm not going to hurt you." He raises a hand to the chair. "Please sit.” There's a click and pressure lessens at her wrists. She turns her head to see the cuffs fall to the floor.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he repeats. "You can stay standing there if you like."

Compliance, she tells herself. She has to start over. Somehow. Gathering herself, she makes herself walk to the chair and sit.

Something in his demeanor lightens, but of course it would. It's less trouble in the long run for her to be pliant. 

“It's a good idea to keep eye on the bites," he says casually as if he didn't just carry her back like baggage, as if he's an acquaintance and not her jailer. "Da’al fever is common in these parts. I don't suppose they gave you a shot for it?”

Concern - an attempt to unbalance her. It didn't work before, it's sure as hell not going to work now. Mara folds her hands on her lap. She shakes her head.

“It’s been more than two weeks. I haven’t hurt you and I’m not going to. Nor will I take you to anyone who will." He sighs, his shoulders drooping. 

Here it comes, she thinks.

“But I can't let you return to the Empire, Mara.”

Hearing it sends a shiver through her. It'd been tacit until now A distant part of her notes how different it feels to hear it so bluntly. She squeezes her hands in her lap.

“I thought I could have time to tell you bit by bit...maybe that's not the right approach.” He meets her eyes. “If you go back, you’ll die." He lets a beat pass. "That's why I'm keeping you here.” He stays silent for a while. Waiting for her to process the new lie, Mara supposes.

He's not done though. “The Emperor...he put something in your mind.”

She raises her eyes, even as she keeps her head bowed and her voice even. "You think that my loyalty has been _implanted_ \--”

“No,” he interrupts sharply. “That thing in your head is something else. It hasn’t fully taken yet.” His voice lowers, the edge melting away into something else. “When it does it'll..." his voice fades and he looks past her as if the words are difficult to push out, "it'll...wear you away. Little by--" 

Rage pulses in the pit of her stomach and she raises her head, unable to help herself. “Who was it?”

The Jedi blinks, seems to come back to himself. 

“Back at Coruscant -- the one who gave you my name. Who was it?”

He stays silent.

She tightens her jaw. Compliance, she tells herself. The semblance of compliance. “If I’m never to go back, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

He meets her gaze head on. “A name so you can dwell on it? A target? There isn't any."

And for a second, all that is present is her rage. "You keep _lying_ to me." 

The Jedi's eyes widen. "You think I'm lying to you?"

Immediately, she regrets the outburst and forces herself to settle. Compliance, she almost feels Bayeran’s hand tap hard on her shoulder. He was stricter than Raice. She’d always liked him better, but her master had been right. In wartime it's the height of foolishness to be attached to people. Now he’s dead. The Jedi’s friends killed him.

_Save your own life, girl._

"You don't feel that I'm not? Through the Force." Mara firms her lips and stares past him. “But you feel things from him, don’t you? The Emperor. When he’s near?" The Jedi continues as if he's working out a puzzle. "With more clarity than you feel them from anyone else?”

The Jedi shouldn’t know these things.

No one save her and her master know these things.

”Like a...thread. A filament. A connection with him. The Emperor.” The Jedi's voice is soft, but there’s an undertone that makes her clench her jaw. Only her master. “It’s part of your sensitivity to the Force. This connection, the link he set up...exploits it, but he didn't...he didn't teach you anything else? How to listen...” His voice drifts off. Mara feels the weight of his stare, but doesn't look at him directly.

"He hasn't taught you very much at all," he sums up. Thousands of retorts flare up in her mind. This Jedi knows _nothing_. "I thought he had at least taught you to tell truth from lie. I suppose it makes sense he wouldn't. I guess not...yet."

Mara forces herself to stay silent.

"But that mindlink." The Jedi's grim. “It needs to be taken out. Not now,” he hastens to add after her shoulders snap back. “It won’t be...pleasant, especially with you...upset as you are. I’d hoped by now...” 

Mara shifts back on her chair with a drawn breath. Take it out? What?

He caught the movement. “I wish you wouldn’t be so afraid of me," he murmurs. "Everything they’ve told you is wrong. Everything. I don't expect you to trust me, but at least not to be so scared." His face twists. "I guess it’s not that long. Not even a month and if you can't sense it from me...I thought you might...”

She bows her head again. Her danger sense. Is that what he had done to it? Had he'd _taken_ it from her somehow?

What could Jedi do?

He doesn't say anything for a few beats. "I'm not working for the Rebellion," he finally says. "I told you -- I have...no connection to them, especially not as far as you're concerned. I did at one time, and I do believe in them, but I'm not involved in the war effort anymore. I wouldn't ask you to switch loyalties."

He's completely stopped making sense.

“My main concern is the mindlink. I’m not certain when it...takes.” A tinge Mara finally places as mournful comes into it. “It has to do with how he made it -- I would have to take a closer look and..." He closes his eyes. "Better to just remove it rather risk it...latching on fully." He opens his eyes. "And after, you shouldn't go back. There's no point. It's bankrupt of anything that matters. Go anywhere. Just not back. You'll have other options to pursue." He lowers his voice. "You'll be happy you did."

She finds herself inching further away in her seat.

He raises his hands. "I’d...,” he’s not wincing but it’s a close thing, “ I'd like you to be less afraid before I deal with the mindlink, regardless. It can...wait. Not forever...but a while.”

That about seals it. He's insane. She turns her head, eyes trained on the open door to the room she sleeps in. Her cell. The whole damn cabin is a prison. She's in a madman's prison. 

“So you asked what I wanted -- for you to know that the Empire you think you serve doesn’t exist. What exists is...corruption, and what’s in your head is more of that. It’s...it's a death sentence.” He scowls. " _That's_ what the Emperor put in your head." Mara finds herself shifting back even further, half on the edge of the chair, trying to keep her heart rate under control. "That's what he does. You have nothing to fear from me." He leans forward slightly. "Nothing." 

The urge to run gathers under her skin. She has nowhere to go, she reminds herself.

"I just want to save your life," he's saying solemnly. "That's all. This is just temporary." 

Save my own life, she thinks trying for calm, amid the cold sweat all over her. The semblance of compliance. Start over.

“Are you hurt?”

He waits so long, she finally offers a whispered, "No."

“Good," he says, his smile small and more than a bit melancholy. "That's good. If you feel muscle aches and chills, like a cold, you need to let me know.” 

Fortunately, that sounds like a dismissal so she jerks up and grabs the ointment, heading to the room. The floorboards creek with his footsteps behind her. The room looks just as it was and she stops in the middle of it. She doesn't even know what she expected, but she's shaken. What happens now? Tomorrow? The day after? Why has he followed her here?

“You somehow got the rail out,” the Jedi says behind her from the doorway, sheepish. “It was loose? I missed that and the tear through the bug screen-- thought you’d try to break the window in some way. Must have taken a while. You're persistent," a fond note has woven itself eerily into the words and she stifles a shudder. "Clever.” 

Another weighty pause follows, tone becoming matter-of-fact. “I don’t have the another railing and I rather not risk you going out and getting yourself hurt or catching something outside. There might be something else I might have missed and you probably have more experience breaking out than I do keeping someone in." Reluctantly he says, "I’ll have to restrain you at night.”

Mara tightens her hold on the ointment.

She hears him exhale. “Just until I can trust you not to get yourself in trouble.”

To stop escaping. Mara closes her eyes. Never. Not until she’s dead.

The Jedi's voice is oddly dejected. "I suppose it's good it wasn't at Nialin. We'll still go, it'll just have to wait a little."

If my life spills, she thinks, staring beyond the window where the sun has set and light is a distant glimmer, it spills for the Empire. I am not afraid.

* * *

A week passes, much as the ones before, but with exceptions, some subtler than others. Mara’s right ankle is cuffed to the side of the bed at night. She is the one to choose the leg and fasten the cuff herself. The Jedi methodically checks it after she clicks it on. Mara’s heard of captains guilty of treason packed up in escape pods and forced to order their own ships to fire on them. She understands the gruesomeness of that better now. Choice as a farce.

The Jedi uncuffs her early in the morning. He does it through his powers, doesn't even have to approach. Now that the shock of his powers have worn off his use of them feels like a taunt. After a couple of nights he insists she wrap her ankle in cloth to minimize the chafing of skin on metal. She supposes it wouldn't do for her to be damaged before it's time. 

She takes her meals with him suffering senseless prattling. Especially now, she can't forgo the chance to catch some miss, some error, anything to be used for escape. Between monologues, he asks more questions now, mostly about what she's reading, sometimes about her life at the Palace. She doesn't answer anything with relation to the latter, pushes out succinct answers to everything else, eyes on her plate. He doesn't care about the actual content of her replies, she knows. He wants her to talk. As another part of the head game, it's near unbearable. As unbearable as all the repetition that he doesn't mean her ill, that removing whatever he thinks is in her head will be uncomfortable, but better than the alternative. That her being kept here is not to hurt her, but to save her life. It's a chorus...not to hurt you, save your life, not to hurt you, save your life.

Mara sits in silence, and hates him. It's not enough that she's trapped here, he somehow wants to get at her mind one way or another. Maybe make her as insane as he is. Her master will have him squashed like a bug.

She’s allowed to keep her exercise regimen, with the injunction that she’s no longer allowed to close the door of her room for too long. While she never sees the Jedi blatantly looking, she feels his attention on her, never quite sure whether it’s his eyes or his powers reaching out to her. After having been taught to slink into the shadows, to be invisible, her skin crawls with being seen, continuously studied.

Her nights are full of dreams of justice. Of standing on the bridge of a Star Destroyer and commanding the destruction of rebel strongholds, the planet surface before her engulfed in flames. She replays her past missions and the bodies make her feel nothing. She can’t remember the unease she’d felt then. It was normal, Raice had assured her. Best not to look at the bodies. Others are tasked to deal with them. 

She dreams of the Jedi’s death, too. Dreams of execution via blaster, the simplicity of it. Dreams of execution via her lightsaber-- she’s only done that once before; it was simple too, just one swipe of her magenta blade. It’s the thudding she remembers the most. One slump, and the dull thunk of the head on the ground.

_In the name of the Emperor._

Raice hadn’t been there for that one, she’d reported to him after. All had gone according to plan. Her master had commended her for it, and she’d thought, this is what Lord Vader does, but to rebels.

Shackled at night, she almost imagines that seed of power beating like a heart. Potential yet unrealized. Where could the traitor have found out?

 _Take it out_ , the Jedi had said, and she can't think about it to much. Her danger sense continues silent. It'd come back for an instant out in the jungle. He hadn't taken it out fully. Maybe it's all theatrical; maybe he's not as powerful as he seems. Only insane. That's what fuels his quest to soften her up.

Maybe all she needs is to escape for her danger sense to come back. To have everything again.

Night after night, Mara feels the weight of the cuff on her ankle as she tosses. It’s hard to sleep, but she manages because she has to. She has to be sharp, refreshed, for when the Jedi might get careless again. He will. She's gone over her failed escape attempt. She’ll need a better distraction next time to get further. The Jedi cannot be allowed close, it's child's play for him to use his powers, she's ill-equipped up close. Distraction and distance are her best bets. She'd gotten her path wrong. Embarrassment ripples through her; she needs to read the terrain better this time.

Mara ponders distraction over the meals as the Jedi talks about drainage. He hasn’t said it in so many words that this is what he’s been trying to fix it, but his conversation keeps circling around piping, plumbing, and issues of rain erosion.

He continues tending to the garden plot roughly half an hour a day -- she’s kept track -- the rest of the maintenance, she gathers, he does piecemeal in the basement under them. As soon as he leaves her alone, she tries his room only to find it locked, and does another quick sweep of the kitchen, hoping she’ll find something useful.

He’s back too quickly, and she gets through even less than she did before. The Jedi’s gaze on her is knowing, no matter how much she’s trying to pretend she’s only throwing out her plate. She's seen him check the cabinet locks several times. 

Mara only recites her mantra to herself, _compliance, the semblance of compliance _, and knows she should be better about pretending, that maybe she should feign interest in the Jedi's treasonous diatribes, but she reminds herself that he’s caught her lying before, so it would be no use. The tightness in her stomach is a compressed rage. When he suggests taking her to her ship's wreck on the four week mark, it's so transparent a lie, so transparently to court her docility that it's all she can do is avoid screaming and going for his throat.__

Instead, she murmurs, "That would be nice."

He appears distinctly unhappy at her answer. "I thought you'd wanted to."

In her mind's eye she sees her lightsaber melting. It's not there; she knows it's not there. It's gone. Her master undoubtedly has more. He will give her another crystal if she returns. She will have earned it. Mara eats another bite. The Jedi hasn't asked her a question; she's not making herself say more. He's lost in thought for a few moments, which spares her from more talk.

"We can go at the end of the week," he ends up saying, summoning a breezy tone that rings fake. "You'd wanted to. It's a ways off, but maybe just the outing would be good." 

She forces a smile that feels more like a grimace. 

* * *

A week and two days after her escape attempt, he goes to the plot, and she notices the cleaning droid shut off in one gloomy corner of the living room area.

A wave of excitement crashes over her. A mistake. Has to be. He’s never left her alone with the droid before, but he has been more pensive as of late. She looks at the time. She has maybe twenty minutes at maximum. She crouches by the droid. Damaging it is out, of course. Some use, some use…

While she thinks she opens its interior compartment; cleaning droids sometimes carry small implements with which the owner can perform basic maintenance -- and there it is, between some sweeping brushes: a small metal scraper about four inches long.

She sticks it into her pants and quickly closes the droid up. 

The next day, she passes in vigilance, trying to keep her movements, her very thoughts level. The moment the Jedi leaves, she goes to his door and works the scraper in the lock. The mechanism is a simple one. The lock gives and she’s inside. The layout is similar to her room, only that there's one set of windows in the far wall looking out to the veranda at the other side of the cabin. The bed is at the center of the room. It's about as sparse as hers.

Like the first exercises she did at thirteen, she tells herself to calm the frenzied beat of her heart. Games, Maesu had called them. Mara would be asked to stealthily infiltrate courtier apartments in the palace, memorize the contents of their bedroom drawers and put everything perfectly back in place. 

Tools, she thinks, where did he keep the tools? She opens and closes drawers, her ears open to any sound of the Jedi's return. But other than some tiny screwdrivers, pliers, and other small tools for circuit work in a drawer, she finds nothing. He must have moved them down to the basement for the work there.

But she notes the windows in his room don’t have bars. Her heart skips a beat, but she pulls herself back. He found her too quickly last time. Getting out won’t help her without a considerable distraction. She files the information away, and she makes herself skitter out, lock the door from the inside and sit back down on the table, datapad in hand as if she's immersed in her reading.

After, when the Jedi is back and none the wiser, droning on about the rains previewing the rainy season, Mara thinks back to her first real instructors. Maesu. She'd been rotated out after six months. Mara wasn’t told why. A man with a lean, hollow-cheeked face, Etres, had taken over her training after. He was rotated out a few months later, and Baleyan was next. He didn't seem like he'd make an instructor for anything with the lazy way he moved. That was, of course, part of the lesson, until he was gone too. Raice took her on after Baleyan's reassignment. Her master has been her only constant. It's been weeks since she's spoken to him, she realizes with a pang, weeks since she's felt his approval and pride. Just as well, she thinks. She hasn't earned it.

With the next storm, she notices an increase in tension from the Jedi, and he’s silent for longer than he usually is. The storm passes without incident and his tension fades enough for him to go into another monologue about the importance of supply chains in the Outer Rim, turns to the upmountain trail to the wreck as if he's actually going to take her there. 

It must be several weeks before the rainy season begins, the germ of an idea begins to form. If it rains, her whole plan will fail. 

Any finely grained organic powder, she remembers from her lessons, can combust rapidly. So if she manages to toss a smoking container of protein powder out onto the veranda, the fire might be a sufficient distraction, allowing her to break into the Jedi’s room and use his window to escape.

It’s riskier than last time -- if the powder catches fire inside the cabin, it's an end for both of them -- but a couple more days pass and no other ideas emerge. She’s taken to skimming the propaganda he loaded onto her datapad and imagining justice to the narrators of the accounts for their lies. It helps pass the time when it dawns on her that three weeks and six days have passed. They're almost at the end of the week. 

She'll do it, she decides. At worst, she'll die and be spared whatever he has in stock for her, or they might both die. If she's extremely fortunate, he'll die and she'll escape. If she's less fortunate, she'll escape with enough of a head start to make it to the river and down to a settlement.

* * *

Nights continue to be the worst, so she sinks into her memories.

"Tell me," her master had begun in one of her favorites, which she plays like a song, over and over. "Do you miss your parents?" 

She'd shaken her head with a smile. "I have no time for nostalgia, my lord." She hadn't, her days were packed with lessons and assessments until she collapsed in a tired heap in her bed. She had a day of recreation, but she often preferred to spend it practicing whatever had been found deficient during the week, chasing her instructors' pleased eyes. If she did well enough, the emperor himself would comment on it during their walks. 

There'd been a smile in her master's voice as he said, "Good. I saw this in you. That ambition would go further even than...those bonds." His gaze acquired an evaluative cast. "So you don't feel lacking with respect to your peers?" 

Mara had let a smile cross her face. "My peers would be entering the Royal Academy now." 

"True. And you think yourself better than the Academy's graduates?" he'd asked mildly. 

Mara knew herself to be; it was common sense. She'd been studying and training for longer than the three year standard Academy programs, and... 

She'd tilted her head slightly. "My master personally selected my instructors in all areas." 

Her master had chuckled. "Indeed, I did." He stopped by one of the trees with overhanging branches, and there, in the shade, drew something from his cloak, a box he presented to her in his outstretched hand. "For you, child." 

Gingerly, Mara had reached for it. 

"Open it." 

With the same care, she had drawn it open. Inside there'd been a grainy material she hadn't recognized. 

"You are to receive instructions that you must follow to the letter. Only under very specific conditions, will the starter you hold crystalize." She'd raised her eyes to her master's face, finding his eyes glittering. "It will become a focusing crystal. A lightsaber crystal. One that hasn't been seen for hundreds of years." He had graced her with a small smile. "I will let its color be a surprise." 

Mara had gasped. 

"A tool of a woebegone age, yes." He’d waved a hand, the fabric of his cloak fluttering slightly in the breeze. "Although Lord Vader has found use for it still. You'll find that a lightsaber, despite its history as a weapon of betrayal, does have its advantages..." 

"Lightsabers are illegal," she'd found herself whispering in shock. 

Her master had chuckled again. "Not for Lord Vader," he said. "And now, not for you."

The glow of pride that had suffused her was beyond comparison, a heady swell of emotion she had to stiffen her shoulders against. Very carefully, she’d closed the box. A _lightsaber crystal_.

"You _are_ better than your peers," he'd continued, and placed a hand on her upper back to guide her back to the path. "Instructor Raice says you have excelled in all the assignments given to you. He finds you ready to complete them alone from here on in." Her master had met her eyes. "I agree with his assessment. You have grown much this past year, my dear Mara." His voice gathered a bit of sorrow. "I think I will not be able to call you _child_ much longer."

She'd shaken her head, clutching the box tightly. "My master can call me anything he sees fit."

* * *

The next day, she takes out the datapad's battery. The oven has an automatic child lock enabled when the Jedi's not around. The only source of energy she has access to is the datapad. It’s got treasonous lies; this is the only use fitting for it, she tells herself over the odd wrenching feeling in her chest. She circles part of a wire to the negative terminal of the battery.

When the Jedi goes outside to tend to the plot, Mara dashes for a case of flostarch, a sock she'd stuffed in her pocket in hand, her footsteps making the floorboards creak. She touches the other side of the wire to the positive terminal of the battery. It flickers a spark, the exposed bit of wire in the middle heats up, warmth rising. The spark licks up into a tiny flame, nearly singeing her fingers. She was ready with the sock to catch it, the flame twisting up the fabric, and Mara drops it into the container, and quickly closes it.

She throws the soon-to be-be smoldering package out the windows by the kitchen. Scarcely a second later, the door behind her beeps open, and she goes to the conserv as if she's getting herself water. The Jedi is back from working on the plot. 

_Catch_ , she thinks to the flame in the smoldering container, breathing out, _please catch_. It won't be a detonation per se, only a quick ignition, but it will be enough. Mara forces herself to calm down, nonchalantly moving back to the dining table with the water pitcher. The Jedi tilts his head slightly, eyes sharp on her.

For a second she thinks he’s going to say something, to pry what she did out of her somehow, but that's when she smells smoke and her danger sense decides to come back, as stridently as it did last time. Mara almost --irrationally-- dashes to her room, but forces herself to ignore it and the shaky feeling that wells up, bracing herself. The Jedi is rushing out the door, his hand flying over the access panel as he inputs the code.

Once he’s gone, she uses the metal scraper, quickly picking the Jedi’s door open, harder now that her hands are trembling. Grabbing the desk chair, she goes to the window, opening it and climbing out on the far left side of the cabin. The smell of smoke is stronger once she does, but whatever fire came to life it did so at the opposite side and still hasn't reached this side-- the wood must have been treated somehow. That's as much thought she can spare as she throws herself up and over the balustrade again. There's no coming back from this. 

Mara bolts, dashing about the tree passageway at a punishing pace. Her lungs feel like they’ll explode, but she doesn’t dare hesitate. She veers in the opposite direction from the way she took last time, comes to a place with sawgrasses that reach her shoulder and a smell of decay that tells her she’s in lowland. She’ll go further than she did last time, she’s certain.

The river has to be near.


	6. Chapter 6

##### V. Rot

  


* * *

  


3.7

Test notes:

  * Light amplification weakens internal matrices
  * Unpredictability follows pressure
  * Containment significant issue



How to access energy output in predictable path?

* * *

~~~~

Mara maneuvers through marshlands flecked with elephant grass, the cloying smell of decomposing vegetation around her. Squelching under her boots, the ground is far wetter than it’d been on the terrain last time. The river bank can’t be too far.

Her footing perils in the spongy mud. Her concentration shuttles between keeping up momentum and avoiding the swarming insects in the low-hanging boughs. Vines yank bits of her hair free from her braids and scratch at her face. She trudges on, climbs uphill, her lungs aching with the weight of the rank, muggy air, her muscles tiring with constant strain. She just has to keep moving, if she has to crawl up her hands and knees, so be it. The Jedi won't be pleased with the datapad she'd ruined, the fire she started. 

The river peeks through the foliage, a murky green sheet of water, and her heart takes flight. Mara schools herself. She's hardly safe yet. She skirts the border of the river banks keeping cover. The river is too wide to cross. She doesn’t know what might be in it -- even without that concern, walking through the jungle after swimming is not a great idea. 

Birds trill loudly above her. She gives a quick scan overhead. Above the river, the sky is the color of bones; it looks like rain, but it always does these days. She turns her eye to her immediate area, but sees no more movement than before. She almost misses it.

Signs of a camp. Some huge leaves -- maybe the size of her torso -- lie a few yards away in the cleared area in front of a tree, surrounded by what looks like half-chewed pits of some large blue fruit. She scans around, stiffening. What she's on might be a path.

It's started to drizzle. She sees nothing near and her gaze veers skyward again. Is this enough to put out the fire? How much time has passed? The Jedi might have already gotten the fire under control, regardless. He might already be on his way. She needs to keep going. Doesn't matter what or who is out there. 

If this is a camp, she thinks, pushing herself back along the path, whoever made it might have a boat. If she goes downriver she'll be able to the nearest settlement. Naalor? Get to the nearest garrison there. Her footsteps lighten at the thought. Get to an encrypted comm to her master. Hop on the first Imperial transport out. Quermia would be a day, and then they’d shoot through the Perlemian. Back to Coruscant in about a week.

Where a traitor lurks. 

Compared to that, the Satrapy’s corruption is nothing. Her master will send Vader here. She will stay at court hunting down the traitor. Her master will deepen her training. She will never be forced to run again, and she will be able to hear his voice always, even across the galaxy. Never feel that tight desolate feeling in her chest again. She's closer than she's ever been since this nightmare had started.

Mara continues within the foliage, cautiously looking for more traces of life. The Akivan jungle has all manner of life, sentient and non-sentient. So far from civilization, it would be foolish not to be on guard. In the Outer Rim especially, alien species are known to be territorial and aggressive. Whole human settlements have been razed to the ground, their inhabitants brutalized. She’s seen the reports.

Guttural sounds draw her attention and she stops. They are by the river. Mara spies two small barrel-shaped bodies, not much higher than her chest. She can’t pinpoint the species from where she is. 

They are pulling something out of the water, a net, shouting as they do. Several dark snake-like wriggling animals are in it, but Mara can’t make out more against the muck of the ground. Eels? Are they fishing?

Two more individuals walk to the shore. Mara approaches from between a small thicket of trees, keeping herself hidden. The aliens talk among themselves, gesticulating avidly with their stumpy arms towards the catch. Are there more of these creatures nearby? A village of them? One of them takes out a knife and begins to cut the netting.

Mara stealthily draws close, eyeing the knife, then casting her gaze behind her. Her heartbeat thunders at her ears. How far must the Jedi be by now? He'd found her too quickly last time.

He hadn't had a fire to contend with then. Maybe...she dares to hope, maybe he's dead or hurt enough not to come after her.

The vines moving themselves out of the way floats up in her memory. His powers.

Her cuff opening every morning of its own accord.

Somehow she doubts it'd be that easy.

Mara pulls her attention back to the group. The creatures look like Ugnaughts, similar pig-like faces and size. The Ugnaughts she’s seen work in maintenance, wide tool belts around their stocky bodies as they waddle behind whatever tech is in charge. These aren’t even wearing clothes and from what she sees their tools are crude -- all indications that communication might be a problem.

Coming closer, she sees a clearing just behind the shore. A few logs lie, bench-like, around a firepit. Mara's eyes shift to the side and her heart soars.

On a piece of fabric on top of one of the benches, there are two sheathed knives, a smaller hunting knife and a larger one the size of her forearm. Some other crude tools she doesn’t recognize are lined up beside them...and a blaster pistol.

Except that closer scrutiny reveals it isn’t a blaster at all. Slugthrower. She purses her lips. Outdated, inefficient weapons. Eventually her training would include them, but it hasn’t yet.

Mara looks about and swiftly darts forward, grabs the smaller knife, shoving it into the side of her pants and tucks the pistol into the back, beneath the tunic. On second thought, she takes the larger knife in hand. A cleaver. She unsheathes it.

Slugthrowers can’t be that hard to use, she tells herself. Same principles of marksmanship. Accuracy might be an issue at a distance, given the slugs. She knows enough to know that they are loud and would spoil her cover. Dissidents have used them for the intimidation factor. Histrionics in the theater of war, her texts have called it. 

Mara has no time for theory. She hopes it won't be that difficult to use. She might need to hunt later on, or keep predators away.

Her eyes go to the aliens. Would these Ugnaughts have a boat she can commandeer? That could make everything easier, lessen her time in the jungle. There’s four of them. She looks behind her for signs of the Jedi, and misses her danger sense anew. Dead, she thinks. Maybe he's dead.

She emerges from the brush.

The Ugnaughts are too busy taking whatever they fished out of the nets to notice her at first. She has to yell, “Hey!”

They turn around, beady eyes zeroing on her. She beckons to them. Their chitter rises to squawking as they notice she has their cleaver and tentatively approach.The noses are different in these Ugnaughts, she notes, and their hair consists of white tufts well past their foreheads down to their chins, but what's more relevant is that their voices raise, faces pinching as they talk among themselves and point to the cleaver in her hand. 

Though they'd come when she'd waved them over, this isn't the reaction she'd wanted. She'd been hoping for silent apprehension and this isn't that. Apprehension means deference; things don’t tend to go smoothly without it. Mara frowns. It might be the figure she cuts -- how baggy her clothes are, much more so than they used to be, despite her best efforts; she’s also mud splattered, her hands caked with it, her tunic torn, dirt-laden, disheveled braids. She probably doesn’t look like much of an Imperial.

She rolls her shoulders back, bringing herself to her full height, back straight, and plants her feet. A dignified appearance is important, but _Imperial_ is more than looks.

“Any of you speak Basic?”

The Ugnaughts share looks among themselves, their eyes on the cleaver in her hands. They continue chittering quickly, sounding annoyed. None of them answer. She repeats the question, but they are too involved in their own discussion. She glances off to the sawgrasses from where she came again.

Mara has no time for this.

She raises her voice. “Hey!” 

The Ugnaughts look at her again, Mara sees annoyance in their piggish, dull-witted faces.

She tries for authoritative, but her voice comes out too shaky. “I am an Imperial agent.”

They stare at her blankly. Every minute lost, the Jedi could be moving closer. She suppresses the urge to break into a run.

A flash of inspiration strikes, and she and leans forward tracing the Imperial crest on the muddy ground with the cleaver. She gestures to herself with the cleaver holding it in a reverse grip, hilt bumping against her chest. 

“I am an Imperial agent,” she makes herself enunciate, speaking slowly, and points to the symbol and herself again. Her voice doesn't shake this time, at least. “Me.”

Their gazes demonstrate no awareness, no understanding of what she has said. It makes her head feel heavy with pressure. The Jedi could be even closer. He knows the area. She blows out a breath. Mara leans forward again, traces a boat onto the dirt. 

“Boat.” Mara points to it and them with the cleaver, a knot in her stomach, at the base of her neck. She's not looking to sawgrasses again. “I need one.” 

They simply stare, and a suffocating feeling wells up inside her. She lifts the cleaver to gesture at the surrounding area, where the Jedi will emerge from, from where he will grab her and drag her _back_. _You can’t return to the Empire_ , he'd said and he'd silenced her danger sense. Her stomach clenches. She'd started a fire. She might even have burned down the whole cabin, and he might be alive and heading hear to make her pay for it. These aliens are going to get her _caught_. She could make them squeal for it.

 _Order, restraint, control_. Raice's voice comes to her from a memory. She tries to settle. 

“Here?” Her voice sounds odd to her ears, too shaky, breathless. “A boat here? A boat. For the river. A boat.”

They say nothing, and Mara tightens her lips. She needs to keep moving. They're worthless. She straightens up.

One of the Ugnaughts blats something at her from the side, waddling to her. It sounds angry, but she ignores it as she scans through the grasses. Her heart rate speeds up. What has the Jedi done to her that her danger sense is silent? She _needs_ it.

She doesn’t expect that Ugnaught to grab her wrist with the cleaver. Her arm snaps back, smashing the handle of it against the Ugnaught's face with a crunch. For a split second she stares at the alien, crumpled on the ground, without making sense of anything. 

With growls the three remaining Ugnaughts lunge towards her. Her free hand pulls the pistol out on reflex her other lets go of the cleaver to steady her grip -- _snap crack_ one shot-two-three. 

It’s target practice except for the echo of the shots, the weird smell in the air, not ozone, and she --

She just gave away her location.

A warbled cry tears through the air. Mara’s running, running. Stumbling. Racing. Falling. Scrambling up. Branches, vines, grasses scratch at her. Stupid, stupid. She’s choking, wheezing as she pushes on. Her chest and stomach ache. When she breathes it comes out in sharp gasps that are all she can hear. She trips. The ground's soft under her hands. She smells smoke. 

Mara squeezes her eyes closed and breathes through her mouth.

There's no smoke. No smoke anywhere. She's going to get up. Right now.

Mara stands and scans around. She's by shrubbery, deep purple lilies and red ferns along with vines, a couple of steps from a tree covered by blue moss. The sky above has disappeared behind the forest canopy, darker now. She no longer sees the river bank. She risks getting lost if she keeps going. The river is her best chance.

Trudging back, it seems like the hour has grown later. She thinks of when it gets darker. Mara doesn’t have a glowrod and a fire would call too much attention from any predators about. Dread over losing the river curls into her, but its banks come back to view before long. She continues further downstream until she's thirsty enough to consider drinking from the river. It's not what she'd prefer.

Mara recalls the documents mentioning the water from the Akivan canyons being pure, and eyes the water, acutely aware of her throat being dry. Not too long after she's thirsty enough to silence her worries and crouches to drink. The water has a slight mineral taste, but it's to be expected. It's not bad. As she looks up she spies the mouth of a cave in a rock formation by the edge of the river, the opening a couple of feet above the water, about halfway to a ledge about six feet above. 

Any number of creatures could be hiding out in it.

Her eyes look skyward. Once the light goes, it’d be foolish to keep moving. Her limbs are feeling heavier with every step. Will she be able to find a better spot to stop for the night? She moves towards the pitch-dark hollow, her back tight. At least this offers her a place to rest while she figures out her next move.

The water reaches her shins as she moves to the opening. She would never climb in there if the clouds threatened rain, it’s too close to water level. During wet season proper, it’s probably completely flooded. Now that she’s closer, she’s tempted to think of it as more of a crevice than a cave. She climbs in carefully, doesn’t hear anything alarming, but stays near the opening, ready to spring out. It’s cool and damp, more pleasant than the stifling humidity outside. She changes her mind as time passes and cool starts shifting to cold. She wraps her arms around herself in the falling darkness, listens in for anything past the whispering water and the bird calls outside.

The slugthrower is on her lap and her mind conjures its loud snap-crack three times. How long as it been? Three hours, four? The Jedi has to be dead. But if he isn't he'd know her general location. He'd find the bodies and be able to track her. Why did they attack her? Stupid. She'd told them who she was.

If the worst should happen, her thoughts turn morbid as she rubs at her arms, she’d thought it’d happen in a conflagration of glory and duty. Not here. Not like this.

She thinks of the crack of her fist against the Ugnaught’s face. Pointless. All pointless.

She’d been _chosen_.

_In a sea of stones, you are a gem._

The seed of power is her master's. That, she'd always known. Power through him. It's always been through him. A link, the Jedi had called it. She'd never quite thought about it that way, but of course. Her gift. A gift _to_ her. So she could hear his voice always. His real voice, not just memories. A comfort to keep her still and calm when things looked dire. 

She thinks it's the seed that whispers now: Pass this test, come back to Coruscant, join court. A gorgeous aquamarine gown. Her hair allowed past regulation length. Unbeknownst to the court, she’d be something else. No one would know of her service to the Empire, to her master. It’d be a secret. The most valuable treasures were kept secret.

In the room in the cabin, her cell, she's thought back to her earliest memories trying to track down since when she's known of this gift from her master, but can't pinpoint when exactly. It doesn't matter. She was chosen. All her life she’d yearned to be worthy of it.

Mara shuts her eyes, shivering violently. Not all is lost yet. The Jedi could be dead. She could get to Naalor tomorrow. Find the garrison. Return to her master.

What does the traitor plan? Is her master in danger? The guards have to be up to the task. Her master hand picks them. She hopes that Lord Vader is near. Her master might know the hearts of men better than anyone, but can he defend himself against an attacker he cannot see? He has to. 

If something should happen...her throat closes up. She’d be responsible. Her failure here would have led to it. 

She has to make it through. Darkness swims in her vision, saturates her pores. She can’t stop shivering, her teeth chatter.

And from the outside, a call. “Mara.”

Her stomach plummets, and she brings her other hand to the slugthrower. She should have checked how many slugs she had left. Too late now. 

“Mara.” The Jedi’s voice sounds flatter than she’s heard it before. Tense. “I don’t know how many times to tell you I won’t hurt you.”

 _It pains me to show you these things_ , her master had said just before her first mission. _Sometimes, I wonder if I should not have left you to grow in innocence._

“I won’t hurt you. Come out.”

_I do not want to be ordinary. If my master has need for me, then this is where I should serve._

He’d been pleased. She’d felt it, warmth unlike anything. He’d always been pleased with her. Always.

“I know you’re here. You have no supplies. No glowrod, maybe a few packets of food but not nearly enough. You don’t know the terrain here either. Your briefing focused on Myrra. That’s a couple of hours via airspeeder. You won’t make it. You can't.”

“I know you want to try,” he continues matter-of-factly. “But you'll get hurt, so I can't let you. Come out.”

Mara stays where she is. It comes to her suddenly -- maybe he doesn’t know exactly where she is. Maybe he won’t know until she actually moves.

“It’s been near a month.” His voice continues in that odd tense way. “I haven’t hurt you and I won’t. Is it really better to risk your life like this again and again?”

_Master _, she can't help thinking. Her master had told her he'd deepen her abilities, but she wonders if it could be as the Jedi says. If it'd be a matter of time and it'd bloom like a viusa blossom in spring.__

_Master._

She feels her face scrunch up. She just wants to hear his voice again. Only that.

“I’ve kept you in the cabin for the same reason I’ve told you over and over. Where you were raised -- it’s poison. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever has you like this, it’s wrong. I won’t hurt you, I didn't last time. I won't now, no matter what. I swear. Just come out."

Mara gathers herself, flexes her fingers. She’s too tired to run far. He'd catch up to her easily. He did last time and she'd been less tired then.

"The cabin is fine," he says after a moment, his voice softening slightly, but the tension still remains. "It's not -- places here, they're treated with anti-flammables. I wish -- I wish you hadn't felt you needed to do that, but you don't need to be afraid I'll -- do anything to you for it. I wouldn't. Even if you'd burned it down. I'd figure out something else."

She has the slugthrower. It’s too dark inside the crevice to check how many slugs she has left. She was careless. Soon it will be too dark for proper aim. Could she wait him out? 

"But it's fine." And her stomach falls because she knows very clearly it isn't. She reads the lie there clear as day. It's written in the tension that underlies his words. "It's okay. The cabin is fine. Just come out. It'll be okay. We'll just go back."

It reminds her of how the hunters caught the hawkbats in her master's private aviaries. The hawkbats had been raised to associate human voices with food, but some instinctive wariness remained. The hawkbat would approach cautiously, the hunter speaking to it in a calm, hushed voice. Bit by bit the hawkbat would near the bait at the edge of the cage. Until it got just close enough.

They'd grab it by it's curved beak and drag it the rest of the way out.

Wring its neck right there.

Mara's breaths are short and sharp. She can't wait. Can't stay here trapped, waiting for whatever he'll do to her. She squeezes her eyes shut, steels herself, visualizing the opening of the cave. Can she climb up to the ledge on top? She has a weapon now. Her fingers skid over the barrel of the slugthrower, then across the muzzle gently. She doesn’t need to cower. She doesn't.

Outside, the Jedi is silent. Can he read what she’s thinking? He said he couldn’t. Emotions. So he knows she’s weighing her options.

That she’s afraid. 

The thought motivates her. Wilderness abounds around her. There is a chance she can escape. Now, she has a weapon.

Controlling her breathing, she peeks out of the cave, the slugthrower in hand. She can’t see the Jedi. She leans out a bit more and makes him out by some trees. He’s not even trying to hide in their shadows. 

Mara grits her teeth, shoves the pistol in her pants and begins her climb, adrenaline running high. She pushes on up, using the rocks to climb, steadying her footing as best she can, quick, quick, a handhold, a foothold. She'll get a viable shot.

Soon, she’s swinging herself over the ledge of the rock formation. She leaps to her feet, pulling the pistol out, takes off down the incline and and into the brush.

The trees are close when she's thrown forward. The pistol goes flying a few feet away. 

She’d reflexively fallen to the side, and away from the Jedi's tackle. The sheathed blade digs into her hip as she rolls onto her knees, about to jump up.

Her leg's yanked back and she goes sprawling on her stomach. Mara reaches for the knife, rolling onto her back with a high slash. The Jedi's above her, his weight pinning her legs and she shoves up her hips, lifting them clean off the ground. He falls forward, braces himself up with hands at either side of her head. 

Sudden pressure holds her arms in place. Mara startles. His hands are not on her arms but _over her_ on the ground -- 

Stickiness splatters on the side of her face as he shifts back, pinning her hips, reaches to tear the knife from her grasp. She's yanking hard against the hold on her arms, thrashing mindlessly now. She can’t get free, can't dislodge him. She can't--

A shrill scream rips from her throat.

He darts -- almost jumps-- clean off her. She pushes, but the pressure holding her down doesn't lift. It presses not just her arms, all of her. Enough that she can barely move though she thrashes. Nothing she does works. His powers, she realizes. She even tries drawing into herself, using her mind--

By then the Jedi has leaned forward, cuffs in his hands and her concentration breaks. Her pulse hammers mercilessly against her skull, in her ears. The clink of the cuffs closing around her wrists is almost silent in contrast. Dread snakes through the rage, and she thrashes more until she's wheezing and lightheaded. She hates herself for stopping, but the world is going shimmery and far. Passing out is just about the worst thing she can do.

When the Jedi pulls her up in one hard yank, she goes, tries to get a sloppy stomp kick the second she's in her feet. He sidesteps, no anger, no satisfaction, as he pulls her in front of him. He's not even breathing hard.

Mara lets herself go limp, and like last time, he teeters with a grunt at the sudden weight yanking at him, but he doesn't let go or fall...and neither does she. That same pressure from before holds her up. It's awful.

“You won’t walk.” It’s not a question and the delivery is flat, but a near overwhelming wave comes to her, roaring that he hates this, hates everything about it, but it's not him, it's her. _She_ hates everything. Him most of all.

Mara steps back, shifting for a good angle for a stomp, a shin scrape-- 

“If you keep at it, I’ll be forced to bind your ankles too.” A testy note slinks into his voice, warning. “We have a longer way to go than last time.”

Gingerly, he approaches to hoist her up, and Mara knows compliance is her best bet, that she should wait, start over, but she _can’t_. She thrashes in his hold and he steps back. Her balance is off and she ends sprawled on her stomach. Unyielding metal wraps around her ankles. Another clink. It seems louder this time. 

He turns her and hauls her up over his shoulder the same way he had before. She struggles despite the cuffs until everything starts growing far. Mara stops. 

She's not going to black out. She won't. She's better than that. 

Mara spends the rest of trip back breathing and willing everything to come back.

Finally, it does.


	7. Chapter 7

##### VI. Exteroception

  


* * *

  


3.20

Throughout the test one thing seems constant, the crystal resists quantum mapping. G. is indefatigable. He theorizes that the crystal output might work along a different frequency. ~~One of the Jedi commentators in the datacron brought to us called it a somnolent stone, said it would wake with purpose.~~ What we do know is that the power accessed is too erratic. Its diffraction at the power levels found is dangerous.

* * *

~~~~

  


  


Now that she's reasonably certain she won't pass out, Mara tries to get a handle on the time. Not that, slung over the Jedi’s shoulder, her hands and ankles cuffed, she’d see much of anything but the ground. He takes a different path back -- they don't cross the grasses, it's just muddy ground for a while, then dry land.

She focuses on keeping her tension level, though there’s a wash of dread at what’s coming next. To have been so close...

What happens now?

Wan light seeps through the clearing where the cabin is, she sees reflections of it on the ground below, a tenuous iridescence twinkling in the twilight, the shinning floor of the jungles like faint stars. No wait, it's not a reflection, she realizes as she looks closely. A reflection of light wouldn't move.

They're bugs, much like the one she'd squashed weeks ago. A kind of...beetle? Thousands of them. Their shells glint with some kind of bioluminescence, fragile light as they scurry from away from the Jedi's boots. A wave of disgust rolls over her.

The Jedi climbs up the steps to the veranda. Nothing seems amiss from what little she sees hanging upside down, head heavy with too much blood. She can smell smoke faintly in the air, but can't make out what the damage was. It must have been as he'd said, as she'd suspected, the damn antiflammables. She’d have wanted it all to burn. A splendid conflagration, the Jedi at the center.

The Jedi inputs the code and the door opens.

He walks in tentatively, and the lights come on. Crossing over the living area, he leaves her on the chair and goes to the access panel. Mara tries to jerk up, but she aches, her muscles rigid and sore. Besides, with her hands and ankles cuffed her mobility's limited.

Trapped.

Seeing the dining and living area makes her stomach tighten. Same as it was.

With a click, her cuffs fall from her wrists and ankles. It makes no difference now, at the end of the day. She pulls her hands to her lap and rotates her wrists, her ankles. The air from the enviro controls makes her feel shiver in her sweat damped clothes.

Mara rubs her arms and watches as the Jedi washes his hands, rummages through the cabinets, whipping out something. A small square packet. He puts it on the counter while he gets a water pitcher and pours a glass. He opens the packet and drops its contents in the water. A fizzing sound whispers in the air.

The Jedi brings the glass to the table and nudges it towards her with two fingers.

He's dirt smudged, his tunic’s torn in various places. The cut stands out from among the dirt along his cheekbone. Her knife. Probably needs a stitch or two.

It’s trivial. She doesn’t want to hurt him; she wants him _dead_.

“Neutralizer,” he says, meeting her stare, expression neutral. “Did you drink the river water? It’s not toxic, but you’re looking at a week or more of stomach issues without this. Won’t be fun.”

Mara looks at the glass. She wants nothing from him.

“You’ll live," he continues with the same flat tone. "At worst I’ll run an IV line when you dehydrate.”

The idea of him jamming a needle into her veins is what prompts her to lean forward and grab it. The tablets have no taste, and she’s thirsty so she makes short work of it, harshly wiping her cheek with the back of her hand after.

His face remains blank as he regards her. Is he thinking about a suitable punishment? 

Mara remembers the pistol. She closes her eyes and imagines it. The cool grip. Snap-crack. Not one of the Ugnaughts, the Jedi’s body heaped on the ground. 

The glass clinks against the sink as the Jedi returns it.

She wants to run. It’d do nothing for her, reminds herself. The door is locked. 

Mara opens her eyes rubs her arms again, rolls her ankles again.

“I want to trust you,” he starts, his back to her as he stands over the sink, he bends over it slightly, shoulders hunching up, “but you’ve given me no reason to. Why would you risk getting caught in a fire?” Another weighty pause, his voice strains with something that seems like dread. “The talpini bodies by the river bank...that was--was that you?"

Talpini? The name takes a few seconds to register. The Ugnaughts? Of course he’d found the bodies, she finds herself thinking bitterly. Mara bows her head over her hands, notes that one of her braids -- the left one -- is almost undone. A section of hair falls partially over her face. She makes no move to push it back.

The Jedi's voice grows stern. "Why involve them at all?"

He seems more upset by that than the fire. The aliens had lifted their hands against her. There is nothing else to be said, even if she were to speak.

But she owes him nothing, so she won't.

"I never had the impression you were taught to murder senselessly." It sounds like it's through gritted teeth. Angry.

The accusation is beyond the pale. That's what _they_ do. She straightens her back, pushes her hair back. “I was _attacked_."

“They were armed?” He turns, scowling. There’s a note of outrage that joins the skepticism in his voice. Mara remembers herself and bows her head again. 

"Talpini are not known to be aggressive. They keep to themselves." 

To speak was a mistake, she thinks. No reasoning with this sort.

“Were they armed?” he pushes and when she doesn't answer. " _You_ were."

Eventually, he realizes she’s not going to answer.

“For any time you're out of my sight,” he pronounces. “You’ll have cuffs on.”

He goes to the conserv and pulls out something she can’t recognize. It’s not a mealpack, might be some sort of grain.

How righteous, she thinks, when rebels are, after all, a pack of terrorists, and she'd been _targeted_ by that traitorous scum-- that is why she's _here_ as a captive. At worst, a weapon to get back at her master. Anger boils within her until she spits out, “Not like you all don’t already have a list of my _crimes_.”

He’s just bringing a pot up from one of the lower cabinets. She can’t tell if he lost his hold on it or purposely banged it -- once and loudly -- on the counter.

“There is no _you all_." His voice raises slightly as he continues, words short and pointed. "There is only _me_ , and I don’t have or want a list of all the Emperor has had you do.” He turns around and fixes her with a sharp look. “Should I repeat that? Since you clearly don't listen.”

“There is no one else. No one else knows about you, your position, your training, your assassinations, and whatever else the Emperor and his people have _told_ you is important. Only me, and the only part about that _I_ care about," he snaps, "is all that being _gone_.”

She blinks, wariness resurfacing. He is mad. Raving mad.

The Jedi heaves a sigh and stays very still. When he moves again reaches grabbing something from a top cabinet. Mara shifts away in her chair as he approaches, but he only to slap the ointment on the table. 

“Go shower.”

* * *

It’s not as simple as it would seem. The Jedi follows her as she plods to her room on aching legs to pick out fresh clothes. After he double-checks the lock on the ‘fresher window, he leaves her to shower in private, but she no sooner dresses and opens the door than he’s there in the hall. He gives her a choice, the room, her ankle cuffed while he finishes dinner, or the living room where he can keep an eye on her.

His words still ring in her head. _The only part of that I care about is all that being gone._

She chooses the room.

“I would give you the datapad,” the Jedi says as she cuffs herself, a stiff undertone of reprimand to his voice. “But you destroyed its battery.”

Mara doesn’t acknowledge the remark, though something in her twinges at the datapad's loss. This is all an elaborate head game, she reminds herself. He'd have probably taken it from her eventually.

The Jedi leaves after, and a pall of desperation settles upon her, making her throat constrict. Is being prey to a madman is much better than being given over to rebels?

What does _all of that being gone_ mean?

She swallows hard, takes deep breaths, and thinks back. _Take it out_ , he'd said. The link he's talked about. 

Mara fiddles with the cuff at her ankle, thinks of her master instead.

* * *

“But first,” her master had said solemnly. “Your focus needs to be a fine-honed thing. Your mind must be clear of all obstruction. You will find it challenging.”

It had been. As much as her visualizations helped, she’d passed many afternoons in the exercise rooms, sitting on the mats alone.

“Is there more?” she’d asked once. “Beyond visualizations. The ability to act through the Force.” Taking a breath she added, “For me.”

Her master had smiled. “You worry you cannot?”

“Whatever I have is at my master’s disposal,” she’d replied automatically, “If my master is pleased then so am I.”

He’d chuckled softly. “I would never ask you to curtail your ambition.”

Mara had looked down, and he’d laid a soft hand on her shoulder.

“Rest assured, your gift will allow you to do extraordinary things. You will find, once we begin to expand beyond building the foundations, that your progress will be quick and sure, but foundations are necessary. In time, it will become clear why.” He drew his hand away and resumed walking, Mara beside him. “You have excelled in every task presented before you. In this, too, you have my utmost confidence. Patience, child.”

* * *

Mara, back in this room that is no more than a cell, stares at the cuff around her left ankle. She’d made a fool of that confidence, hadn't she? The memory is less of a comfort than she'd wanted.

 _Take it out_ , the Jedi's words echo in her head. Like her danger sense. He took that.

The cuff clinks open, and she startles though she should be used to it by now. The Jedi stands at her door. Dinner. 

The message understood, he returns to the kitchen, Mara trailing behind. Her plate is a simple affair of rice and some legume. She barely registers it, her eye moving across the space, towards the Jedi. 

He’s showered and changed in the time she'd been cuffed and covered up the slash in his cheek with gauze. She wishes she had slit his throat. 

Most of dinner passes in silence. Across from her face the Jedi's face closed, as distant as he'd been earlier. As angry as before she intuits, but there's something else wrapped in it that worries her. If she weren't so unsettled she'd enjoy the silence more. 

Finally she can't take it and has to ask, "What do you mean _take it out_?"

He doesn’t pause or seem surprised at her question. “Destroy the mindlink.”

Mara continues eating, ignores the chill that travels down her spine.

Something in his demeanor eases. “I wanted for you to trust me, at least a little, but that’s not happening, is it?” He stands, his empty flimsiplate in hand. “There's no point to drawing things out much longer. Better sooner than later." That flat tone is back. "I can't risk it taking.”

“When?” she ventures after a moment.

He gets a glass of water. “I don’t know yet.”

Mara was hungry before, but now she can’t eat one more bite. An ache blooms at the pit of her stomach.

“It’s a delicate thing and I...” His voice softens as he squares his shoulders, his back to her, hands on the counter as he'd been only hours before, something weirdly defeated in him. “I don’t think there will be retaliation for your...” she notes the slight pause there, “murders. Most likely the talpini clan has fled. But there is a small possibility that they might track you here, come in the morning. I’d rather worry about one thing at a time. If it's the mindlink, then the mindlink. And if it's you bring tracked--”

Her mind works through the information. Wait. She tries not to sound eager, mumbles, “You could hand me to them.”

He turns and tilts his head at her. She's not looking at him directly so she can't make out his expression, but his tone is wry. “Easier to get away from them than from me, you mean.”

She clenches her jaw. “Maybe I wouldn’t.” If she took his terms and regurgitated them back… She lifts the utensil towards the plate, forcing in another bite. Any weakness is a luxury she cannot afford now. “Maybe it’d be justice.”

His tone is equal parts skepticism and impatience as he sits back at the table across from her, glass in hand. “We both know they’d have a difficult time holding you," he says as if he's humoring her. Her last statement he completely ignores.

Mara tamps down on a scoff, tries to soften her tone. "So they come and they ask for justice and you'll just...what?" 

At the end of the day, it's all the same. Someone has the blaster and someone doesn't.

He frowns at her. “I might have to speak for you -- make a case that you won’t do it again. That you're not a danger anymore.” His expression turns troubled. “Not that it's enough."

Mara looks down. Now, of all times, is not a good moment to make him angry. But it's gloss and she can't help but want to rub his face in it. "And if they don't accept it?"

"Then they don't."

She raises her head again, moves her utensil around her plate. "And if they insist on justice?"

 _Justice begins with revenge,_ her master has often said, _for some, revenge is the only justice there is_.

The Jedi's eyes narrow. "We have have very different definitions of justice."

That doesn't answer her question at all, but he looks unhappy enough that it seems like it's conceding a point. If the aliens came they could ask for justice for their dead and the Jedi would speak nicely to them, but in the end whatever he wants with her trumps their desires for restitution. If they push, they too would end like their clanmates.

Someone holds the blaster. That's just how the universe works.

True justice is when the right people do.

"They probably won't come. Not based on what I know," he continues. "But if they do they're owed an explanation and assurance."

Gloss. 

He stands abruptly. "This shouldn't have happened," he mutters. "It should have never happened."

No, they shouldn't have lunged towards her. The Jedi shouldn't have held her here in the first place. Mara stays silent, wishing she could say those things, but knowing she can't. Her thoughts swirl. This, too, is all revenge, isn't it? She'd known that from the beginning, a strike against her master. That matters more than whatever retribution the aliens could hope to exact. It's rank hypocrisy to pretend it's anything else. She stands to throw out her plate.

 _Take it out_ , the Jedi had said. Her connection to her master.

_Destroy it._

Like he'd done to her danger sense.

But he can't. It's not possible. Her stomach tightens painfully. Her mouth works for a few moments before she pushes out, “I’d like to go to sleep now.”

The Jedi looks over at her and his blank expression shifts to concern. “I won’t hurt you.”

She makes herself nod.

He rubs at his forehead, closing his eyes, earlier tension replaced by weariness. “I haven’t and I won’t." He opens his eyes and leans forward. "Removing the mindlink...it'll be uncomfortable, but you'll be free of it." He brightens a little. "And after...you won't be in danger and I--I hope you'll...adapt. Consider something else -- anything. You won't be without resources. It's just a matter of letting yourself pick another path. Making your own way won't be easy, but it doesn't..." His gaze focuses on her and he stops. 

Mara has no idea what to do other than nod again, slowly. It unsettling not to know what you're giving away.

“It’s been more than a month,” a frustrated note creeps into the Jedi's voice, “Have you _once_ \-- “ He cuts himself off, appearing at a loss before his expression closes again. 

Mara forces herself to wait out of courtesy, but when it’s obvious he won’t finish the thought, stands and walks to the ‘fresher, hearing floorboards creak as he follows. She breathes easier once she closes the door. A few second later, she calms enough to go through her preparations for bed, the hurt in her stomach lessening. 

The Jedi is there in the hall waiting and it’s as it was before. When she's on the bed she cuffs her ankle. He checks it in the same mechanical way he usually does and stands.

“Mara,” he starts and she stiffens, eyes on her lap. “In the time you’ve been here, I’ve tried to give you as much of your,” he stumbles over the word, “freedom as I can. As much as I can trust you not to abuse it and go back to your handlers. I...didn't expect you'd do this."

She keeps her face blank though it’s a struggle.

The Jedi reads something in her though - whether in her face or in her emotions, she can’t be sure - and adds, “The Emperor. He’s all you’ve known, but all he’s done is twist the good in you. Make you see things that are not there. Feel things that are not there. That's what he does. There's only suffering at the end of it.”

Now he's questioning her sanity, she thinks grimly. 

“I'm not a threat to you. I've never been. But he--he'll kill you, and -- and it'll be a...byproduct. He won't even be there. He'll be dead." 

Mara licks her lips. Maybe it’s an overwhelming sense of futility that leads her to whisper, “Lies.”

“Is that what the Force tells you?" The Jedi crouches by the bed beside her, even not looking at him she feels a strange intensity in his words. "You have the Force. Can't you feel--"

She will never be a traitor. “The Force is my master’s servant.”

The Jedi sucks in a breath. He quiets for a few beats. “Does the Force tell you I mean you harm, Mara? Do you _feel_ danger from me?”

Her danger sense.

She closes her eyes. It comes out harshly accusing. “You did something to me. When I crashed.”

He seems to take it as an opening. “I _healed_ you. Through a tran--”

“You _took_ something from me.” Maybe for this one moment, so he could try to fool her. She opens her eyes. Another head game. It won’t work. At least she has that. She lifts her head, stares straight ahead. “The Force serves my master.”

"That’s a perversion.” 

The fury there is clear enough that she quiets. She’s pushed her luck enough today.

“You are not this.” While she's pointedly not looking at him she can feel his stare and it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand, makes her want to shift away as far as possible. Eventually, Mara looks down at her hands. She’d cleaned the dirt and mud, even from under her fingernails. A couple of abrasions, minor ones, sting lightly when she closes her fist. 

For a few hours she was free.

The Jedi’s gaze lingers though she doesn’t raise her head. She doesn’t move at all, not even when he stands and murmurs “Good night, Mara,” and slips away, the door locking shut quietly behind him. Only then does she breathe a sigh of relief and let herself slump down on the bed.

* * *

That night she dreams of her airy old room in the Palace, her bed with the Ekrar sheets, the desk made of Fisiji wood, the window through which she could look at the gardens. She does so now, sees the Ch'hala trees, and the Ithorian willows, Summertime Pond shimmering in the distance. 

When she blinks, all of it is burning. With a gasp she turns back. Three talpini, black blaster holes in their foreheads, sit side by side on her bed, grinning grotesquely. Her bed is covered in flames. She's in it, feels the wall of heat at her legs, her lungs filling with the taste of smoke, scorched skin, a burn spreading from her feet up to her calves --

Mara jerks awake.

She’s itchy all over her leg, a burning sensation. She reached down to pull up the leg of her sleep tunic. Her ankle and calf are rash red. She scratches, but that seems to make it worse, and now her forearms itch too. Mara pulls her leg in. Once she starts scratching, it itches worse and she can't stop scratching more, harder. The feeling’s creeping up her limbs, from her wrists to her elbows, her ankles to her knees. Spreading. It's horrible, she can do nothing but scratch and scratch.

The Jedi finds her there scratching her forearms some time later. She doesn't know when exactly. In truth, she barely notices his arrival. She's too consumed with the itch, a feeling of living things crawling all over her limbs. She's scratched until her skin's a bit slippery and stinging, but there's still that damned itch, as if it's all that here ever will be. The areas that hurt when she scratches actually feel better, but not by much.

She's aware of his presence through an interjection in some language she doesn't know that cuts through the air. It had jarred her for half a second, but the all-consuming itch reinstated itself, taking over every thought. 

He grabs her wrist and she yanks it away, snapping,“Don’t touch me” while she drags her fingernails up her forearm. 

“You’re bleeding," he snaps, pulling her forward. "'Fresher." 

Her reluctance this time more about needing to keep scratching when she pulls, but she's forced forward to avoid falling as he says, "Ticks --they're common in the marshlands, around the grasses. You must have put your sleep tunic near your old clothes before you showered -- it's a thinner fabric and they--" The explanation fades, the itch is all she can think about as he herds her to the ‘fresher. She stops every two steps to scratch, despite the Jedi near dragging her.

"Scratching won't do anything but make it worse," he scolds, exasperated. "Cold water and salt will get them out.”

He leaves her at the 'fresher, and she’s desperate enough to rip her sleep clothes off, step into the shower, and blast on the cold water. It's better, but the itchiness only decreases; it doesn't go away. From behind the shower curtain she hears the Jedi's knock at her door and it opening.

"A soak works better," he calls out, briskly. "Since they're burrowed into your skin. I'm leaving the saline solution here."

She's mid-scratch when the door closes. Tentatively, she darts her head out. Two large bags of...saline solution, she supposes, are beside the sink. _Burrowed into her skin._ The stomach-turning description stays with her, even with the burning in her limbs.

Mara grabs one of the bags and returns to the tub, emptying the bag directly onto her raw-looking shins, her bloodied arms. After shoves the stopper into the drain. The burn is harsh and painful on her scratches, sharp contrast to the cold water rising around her, but it immediately relieves some of the itching. She’s shivering when she gets out, sees a mass of tiny black spots going down the drainage. They were not just on her, they were _in_ her, hiding inside her own skin.

Mara inhales sharply. What a disgusting place this is.

At least the itching has gone down, but it returns once she’s drying off. Why isn't it gone? She can’t keep from scratching again, the burning almost worse than before, consuming all thought as she scratches and scratches, a small frustrated sound slipping from her throat. She hates everything about this. It won't _stop_ , and all she can do is sits on the rim of the tub and feel like she's scratching her skin off, _wanting_ to scratch her skin off. 

There’s three knocks at the ‘fresher door and a “Mara?”

She’s too busy scratching and the door opens. She immediately pulls the towel tighter around herself, skittering away to the far edge with a cry of surprise. 

The Jedi holds a bowl of something, scolding her about not scratching and making it worse, but the meaning doesn’t fully register with her. The crawling sensation all over her skin has built up again to too distracting, the burning at her calf near intolerable. Mara pulls in her leg and goes back to scratching harder. 

He bats her hands away. “Here.” He pushes the bowl at her, its contents smell bitter. She goes back to scratching and he raises his voice slightly, the exasperation stark in it. “Rub this on, I said." He mutters something else in another language, the same word he'd spat when he found her. "You're making it worse.”

Mara startled enough to unthinkingly dips her fingers in the bowl, and follow the instructions, making a cracked sound at the sharp sting. It’s some sort of acid, burning harsher than even the concentrated salt from before, but a few seconds later the sting recedes...and so does the itchiness in the spot. She coats the rest of her shin, without looking at the Jedi, keeping the towel tightly wrapped around her.

“Better?” he asks with the same mechanical briskness as he checks her cuffs. He puts the bowl in the floor beside the tub. “Use the rest of it. All of it. I’m going to have to wash the sheets and those clothes.” He’s looking at her sleep tunic.

She feels her face contort in disgust.

“I’ll be back with other clothes.” His eyes flicker onto her arms. "And salve."

The itch has lessened into a dull sting. She looks over herself. Her arms have scratches from above her elbow down to her wrist, a tight network crisscrossing raised red lines. Her shins and calves are worse, enough she scoots to the front of the rub to wash down the smeared blood, wincing at the amount that got on the towel. She gets the bowl and slathers more on after. The Jedi returns with her clothing and the salve. He deposits it all near the sink wordlessly, and leaves.

This would have never happened if she hadn’t been imprisoned here in this forsaken jungle, Mara thinks, slathering whatever that bitter solution is on one arm. She hates this place. She'd obliterate the whole of it if she could. 

Mara lifts her head to the window. Outside it's still dark enough to see that distant glimmer.

Insects. That's what it had been. Bugs.

She feels her eyes prickle and refuses. No. She's going to draw withing herself, wrap herself around the memory of her master's voice, the seed of his power, and empty herself out, then she'll grab all this whirlpool of feeling and let it sharpen her like a blade. Eventually, she'll use it. Somehow. She thinks about that as she finishes up with the solution. 

Closing her eyes, she breathes out and begins.


	8. Chapter 8

##### VII. Rise

  


* * *

  


3.31

G. doesn't sleep much. He can't stop thinking about the crystal, how it evades him, resists his attempts to hold it in place. It's a crystal; it can do no such thing, I say, but he claims that the everchanging matrix within it grants it a type of sentience. Looking at it from the monitors, from this angle and that as it is held above us in its antigrav platform, I wonder who is holding whom.  


* * *

~~~~

  


  


Gingerly, her skin cool and stinging slightly from the solution, Mara emerges from the 'fresher. The Jedi is not in the hall nor does she hear him in the kitchen, but she guesses he wouldn't be -- not yet anyway. It's still dark out. She returns to the room. The sheets are changed, and she's settling on the bed, putting the damn cuff back on when he reappears. 

"The itching's gone?"

Mara nods. The whole thing is embarrassing now more than anything. She can't really look at him.

"And the scratches?" 

"Fine," she mumbles.

"You put salve on them?"

Mara nods again. It's a circuitous way to shame her. She sets her teeth and almost wishes he just went ahead and threw it in her face that this is what she gets for escaping.

"All right." From her peripheral vision, she sees him rub his forehead. "Get some sleep."

He leaves, but, of course, easier said than done. Occasionally there's not-quite-an-itch, the memory of it, which makes her slightly twitchy. She doesn't know if it's that or the general nightmare of the previous day that leaves her restless. By the time it's light out and there's the knock at her door, accompanied by her cuff clicking open, she feels like she hadn't slept at all.

She goes through her usual routine, trudges to the kitchen for breakfast. The Jedi is there over a pan while something is sizzling, and calls out distractedly. "Sleep okay?"

Mara makes a noncommital grunt. It twinges that she should probably be effusively thankful, but she can't muster it at all. She's tired and sick of everything. Sick of the cabin, sick of the cuffs, sick of the sound of the Jedi's voice, sick of the unending prattling, sick of worrying what's going to come next.

He slides a plate with a couple of flatcakes over to her.

She feels like shoving it off the table with a snarl.

"You should go back to sleep if you're still tired." He moves back to grab his own plate. "You were up early."

And for some irrational reason that makes her even angrier, and she inhales slowly as she picks up her utensils, forcing herself to cut a piece and eat it.

"I wonder how far upstream the talpini clans settled," he murmurs as he sits.

It takes a large amount of effort not to toss her utensils down. She masters the urge, making it halfway through her first flatcake.

"I heard about them in Nialin, I haven't been that far up."

If the talpini came, Mara thinks, that'd be as good distraction as any, but her mind's slow with leftover exhaustion and she can't get past the abstract enough to come up with a plan. Meanwhile the Jedi yammers about the talpini who go down to Nialin and even Myrra for trade. It's almost more than she can take. Mara finishes her breakfast, chugs down her tea, and excuses herself as politely as she can manage.

She's not sure if it's suspicion or another form of punishment, but he trails after her as she returns to the room, watches as she cuffs herself. He informs he'll be out back as if it makes a damn of a difference. Mara tosses herself back on the bed after he's gone, rolls to one side, rolls to the other, her legs sore, her skin twinging from where the fabric rubs against her scratches. Visualizes for what it feels like an eternity before she's able to sleep.

* * *

Mara jerks up, her heart pounding in her chest. She wakes up like this more often than not, but as she settles down the Jedi's voice flashes in her memory. _The only part of that I care about is taking it all out_. She shivers, remembering the way he'd looked at her the night before...or not. She'd been looking straight ahead, but she'd felt his gaze in a way she can't explain. 

The chaos and her own exhaustion earlier had made her predicament seem further than it is, she realizes, now flooded anew with the desire to run. 

She exhales slowly, forces herself to relax. It must be around noon from the light outside her window. She shifts in the bed, closes her eyes and breathes in.

Mara turns to her memories, imagines herself at her master’s enormous library. She’s only been there twice, her master beside her. It’s high up in the Palace, and gargantuan with its high vaulted ceilings and its massive pillars lining the near endless hall. From one side you couldn’t really see the end of it. All of the galaxy’s history is tucked along the shelves, datacards of every piece of information a person could want. It was bare of any decor, because none was necessary. It was already a room of treasures. She’d been one of the select few allowed to enter.

I am a gem, she thinks. But the image vanishes too quickly, the one that rises up in her mind is that of the shining forest floor, iridescent in the darkness. The bugs. Mara grimaces.

A thought flits in her head: Will other rebels come to collect her when the Jedi doesn’t bring her in? He'd said no one else knew, but that can't be true.

Mara runs her finger along the cuff between the metal and her ankle to steady herself as her pulse jumps. Just then, her shackles opens and there's a knock on her half-open door.

Gingerly, she slides her legs over the bed and wanders out. She’s not particularly looking forward to lunch, but the inactivity, despite everything, feels wrong. Over the squeeze in her stomach, she thinks that there could be something useful to find. She has to start over. Again.

The Jedi’s washing something in the sink. “We won’t have to have the dehydrated produce for very long,” he speaks up as she approaches the table. “The iken in the bushes is beginning to yield.”

Mara glances at the sofa. That’s where she wants to go, as far from the Jedi as possible, but forces the rest of the short steps to the table and sits. Bends her head, focusing on the dark brown color of the table's surface.

“It’s not really that hard to maintain a plot. The treatments they sell at Nialin take care of the soil’s acidity and most of the pests. It's more a matter of monitoring the amount you use.”

Mara rubs her finger along the edge of the table. He barely lives here. This was somewhere given to him for the trap. Has to be.

So whoever gave it to him, are they coming?

“They manage forests upmountain. The talpini clans, but most likely without those treatments. Slash and burn, I suppose." Mara glances up to see the Jedi tilting his head, considering. "It’s a little more complicated than you would think from the name.”

Mara does her best not to scowl. Truly there’s nothing she wants less than to hear about aliens. They didn't even come. There's really no reason to keep talking about them.

”Not like mineral stripping or anything like that. It’s more about restoring the fertility of the soil without relying on foreign material." He wanders over with their dishes. 

Mara murmurs her thanks as he passes her the plate. Today's lunch is rice again, but it's a different type, stickier, pressed into a ball shape. Beside it there's a patty -- probably made from one of the vegetables, a kind of mash that's fried. 

"The burning is actually very carefully controlled in conjunction with weather and climate conditions."

The gauze at the Jedi's cheek is gone today, she notes. 

"At least that's how other beings who depend on forest land do it -- ewok tribes, for one."

No trace of the cut left. Mara picks up her utensils. Lord Vader is indeed powerful. He'd faced many of his kind. How many? Dozens? Hundreds? Her master had never told her how many. But Lord Vader had killed them all. 

"I'd hazard the talpini do something similar," the Jedi muses and picks up his food with his hand.

Mara stares down at her lunch, tamping down on an expression of distaste as she quarters the packed rice with her spoon. She finds some green paste-like filling inside. Her taste of the filling in the packed rice reveals it to be salty and sour -- a pickled vegetable. It's edible. Good, perhaps, under other circumstances.

"The forest is denser where they are." He's lost in thought, half of the packed rice in hand like a child.

Mara cuts a piece from the patty. They might have had it before once or twice since she's been here. She likes it more than the stewed legumes. She vastly prefers the eggs and cheese though they taste different from the those she'd been used to. They would given that they come from local sources. 

The Jedi eyes land on her plate where she's scooping up a spoonful of the rice, a puzzled look in his face, as if she's doing something odd, but he finishes the packed rice in hand without comment, and goes on, "The clans are small enough to make it work."

They'll run out food at some point, Mara thinks as she chews. They can't only subsist on the plot and their stores. Eventually, the Jedi'll be forced to leave for longer. There might be another opening for escape then.

”I’ve never actually seen any of their villages.” The Jedi picks up his utensils to start on the patty. "This is what I heard down in the settlement."

Mara's jaw clenches. Mountain primitives are really the last of her concerns.

 _Take it out_ , he’d said.

_Destroy it._

"They might come down only to set traps in the river."

Mara remembers the slugthrower. Clearly, the talpini had some contact with a more civilized species. Too bad none of that had made them wiser. But her thoughts summon the cuff at her ankle just twenty minutes ago. The slugthrower hadn't done _her_ any good. Stop, she tells herself.Stop.

"They were fishing. Four adults. Caught several eels, they’d probably have carried them up to their clan.”

She imagines the bodies, not the talpini, but the eels slowly drying out in the nets, dying there too. She shifts a little, uneasy, wills it away, wanting the Jedi to _shut up_ about the aliens already. Is he searching for some response from her? Rubbing her face in her failure? Mara focuses on her plastifork. Thankfully, the Jedi quiets.

Her thoughts do not. They circle and circle around the wriggling, dying eels. None of that would have happened if they hadn't tried to grab her weapons. None of it. If she hadn't been in this cursed disgusting place to begin with. If _the Jedi_ hadn't been keeping her here. That twitchy not-quite itchy feeling returns.

Mara stiffens and shoves it away, imagines herself at a grand table, Lady Uhier instructing her on protocol for an Old Core-style dinner, way back before her husband, some moff or other, was assigned to another planet. 

_You pick the second fork, delicately, yes, just so. Look up, see if there is someone nearby to smile at or to ask a question of as you slice the meat. Gently, gently, we must not look too eager._

The memory fades, and it’s just her and the Jedi in this prison, a choking feeling in her throat. 

She’d never put what she’d learned to use at an official court affair. Not yet. After her debut, she'd been told.

Her throat closes up again. There is a traitor in the court. Her master has to know. He must.

”Mara.”

She blinks, coming back to herself. 

”I asked if you’d like to go out,” the Jedi asks. "If you're not too tired."

Is this another head game? Perhaps -- but all that matters is that the Jedi will make a mistake, she tells herself. Mara nods and goes to throw out her plate. She needs to be ready for it.

He tidies the table and approaches in a plodding, almost reluctant way. The cuffs are in his hands.

The Jedi doesn’t repeat his that line about how he can’t trust her or justify clicking them on. That's fine. It'd be more of a sham than she could bear.

It's the same pattern in the room. He hands them to her. Mara steels herself, thinking _compliance_ as she cuffs her wrists in front of her. One last look to her, and the Jedi goes to the panel.

The humidity slides over her her as she walks out. Bird squawks and insect chirring make up the cacophony of the jungle, startling after the monotonous quiet of the cabin. She steps further onto the veranda, towards the railing, eye skidding over the scorch marks on the wood at her feet. It looks like a cosmetic marring to her. It might have not even been a real fire. Pathetic.

Other than that the scene back here is as it ever was, nothing has changed. The trees she sees from her window are there, looking taller and more massive. Past them, darkness grows as their surface roots snake into the brush. She draws from memory to conjure the tick-laden grass beyond. Her arms and legs itch and she can't scratch, not with her cuffed hands. It's just the memory, she knows. 

Was it a mistake to take up the Jedi’s offer and come outside? As she walks to the railing, Mara feels a sudden hopelessness. Sweat beads and runs down her temples, and she wipes it clumsily with her sleeve, the sweat gathering on her arms and legs in the humidity makes the scratches sting. As uncomfortable as it is being in the stifling heat, something could be useful here, she tells herself. Anything.

”You okay?” the Jedi asks a few steps beside her at the veranda steps.

She doesn’t know why he asks. She’s shackled, with no access to her ship, to a comm, prey to the whims of a madman.

“Fine,” she mutters over it, “Thank you.”

Something crosses his face. Familiar now. He doesn’t like it. Emotions, he’d said, hadn’t he? He must know that she’s lying, that all she’d like is him dead and for her to be far, far away. She should be alarmed; this is not _compliance_ , but all she can think now is _good_. Even if the Jedi doesn’t believe in her compliance, there’s another reason to stay true to her training. Remembering her old lessons brings back memories. A piece of her is still _there_.

A piece of there remains here. With her.

Mara goes down the veranda steps and follows him, hanging a few steps back, as he makes a slow path to the trees, turning in the direction of the grass and she goes rigid, but he makes a turn to another path. Her unease continues unabated, wariness growing with every step.

The masses of trees lining their way disorient her. Occasionally the Jedi pauses to warn her about some low-hanging vine or branch, or to use his powers to push them away. The trees don’t peel away gradually as they had in the area she’d fled to. They simply vanish, baring a river bank. 

It’s not a beach like where she found the talpini. Mara blows out a breath, almost sags in relief, unaware that this was what she'd been expecting. Instead there’s a drop of maybe three feet before her and running water below. From what she can see, it’s not so much a river as it is a stream, the waters shallow and clearer than the river's. They’d reach no higher than her waist if she waded in.

“This flows into the main river,” the Jedi says beside her, “which is what you found. Kora Biedes. That’s the river’s name.”

Mara approaches the drop. Sunlight catches on its surface, making it shimmer. It hurts her eyes a little.

She blurts out, “How long have you lived here?”

His voice is soft as he says, almost absentmindedly, “Not that long.” He's looking past the stream with a far away look. The trees across the banks are odd again, not with the feathery trunks like the ones in the first path she took, these appear to be normal from their brown color to their rough bark. That's where the normalcy ends -- instead of standing they take odd winding shapes arches and twists covered with blue green moss and ferns. They'd seem like vines, save for the fact that they're two times as thick as a man's torso, they almost seem like arch bridges in a sea of mossy green.

It’s someone else with her voice that whispers, "It's not right for you to hold me here."

Mara follows as his gaze drops to the ground, intuiting something there. She hadn't really meant to say that, had she? It'd been without calculation.

Stones are scattered at their feet. This area is not as muddy as the river bank was either. 

It'd just felt like the right thing to say.

And she thinks she hears something torn and uncertain, weak, when he says, "No."

A light feeling begins to bloom in her chest, pressure giving way a bit. It reminds her of finding the loose rail. “You think you're doing the right thing."

The Jedi doesn't respond but he doesn't need to. She's onto something. It's a feeling.

"It's getting worse," she murmurs. "For me and for you." It's as unfiltered a truth as she grasps here, and she senses it's got a power all of its own. "You know the right thing to do. Let me go."

But he draws a breath, and it's as if a spell has been broken. "No." He sounds certain and her heart sinks. "You'll go back if I let you go. And if you do go back there, you _will_ die. There's no telling what will happen to you other than that. I can't."

And it's that ensuing burn that makes her pull on the cuffs uselessly, emphatically, she tells herself. “I’ll run away again. And again. And again." The words are rushing out of her now, torrential. "For as long as you keep me, I’m going to look for a way to run. Sooner or later you’ll make a mistake. Every time, I’ll run a little bit further. Until one day I’ll be gone, and then --”

“And then you’ll find that what you’re running to was never even there,” he finishes for her and meets her eyes. “No matter how hard you try to hold on to it. It's headed towards its own destruction anyway. It'll take you with it if you don't let it go.”

She snarls, “I should believe this from a hostage-taker.”

He shakes his head, solemn. ”You’re not a hostage.” 

”A traitor,” she hisses. "Like the rest of your kind."

His lips form a thin line. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, or what you think of me. Let’s go back.”

It’s tempting to break into a run, but cuffed as she is, she doubts she’d get far. She’d trip over a tree root or a hollow, lose her balance, and end up with a face full of dirt, and worse, the Jedi carrying her back like baggage. Humiliated again.

So she folds her anger up like a cloth within her, and holds onto the memory of her master’s voice. A gem, he'd said.

The Jedi is silent as he tugs her along on the way back. The cuffs come off once they’re back inside the cabin and she rotates her wrists before she goes to the ‘fresher to wash her face. Her exercise routine is next. She’s just finished when the Jedi comes to get her for dinner.

Time extends dismally before her as he prattles. His mood is uneasy, but one wouldn’t think so from the way his words fill the air again, monologues about the next set of plants that will yield. All of his rambling slides off Mara like debris tumbling down a hill. 

As soon as she’s done, she will go back into the room and visualize herself back at the Palace, she decides. That should calm her down. It was progress today, the germ of a solution, like discovering a new set of queries to find her objective.

It's not compliance, not acting, she tries to work out. It's a way of saying things, a subtle way of angling a situation. But without overt calculation. More than that, she needs to sit and ponder. 

Mara’s no sooner gotten rid of her plate that the Jedi’s tone changes, from the casual air of his one-sided conversation to something more serious.

“I’d like you to stay here. I think it’s time.”

Mara blinks, cold shooting down her spine. “Time for what?”

“I think it's like I thought, the clan's fled. I'd like to remove the mindlink now.”

“No.” 

He stays where he is, speaks very calmly. “I've told you my reasons. Repeatedly.”

“Yes, but they're wrong,” she snaps, standing up. "You're wrong."

He shakes his head. "I'm not."

Mara takes a couple of steps back as he stands. Fear jump starts her pulse.

“You misunderstand," she enunciates, pushing away the shakiness of her voice as she speaks. "My training was -- is -- a _mental_ exercise. I don’t... _manipulate_ things the way you do. I don't lift them, I don't move them. There’s nothing in my head.”

He appears confused. “Mara, I don't think you--”

She plows on. “There is nothing in my head. No reason for you to do your tricks or-- whatever." She waves a hand, pushes out the memory of her danger sense. "My head is my head.”

He sets his jaw. His gaze is clear. “There is a _mindlink_ that the Emperor--”

"You wouldn't know." Mara squares her shoulders. "You wouldn't."

“Once it fully takes, you’ll be able to speak to him from anywhere.”

He shouldn’t know that. Who talked. Who? Who? Her hands clench into fists. Another couple of steps back. She's well inside the living room and she needs a weapon, something. Anything. She clenches her fists.

Mara sets her jaw. "You wouldn't know."

“It’ll create a dependency. And when he dies, you’ll start to die too. Little by little, over years. It’ll --it --” his voice catches and the heartbroken look on his face is pure insanity. 

"You don't know." She’s known this was coming, but she’s done nothing all this time, she _couldn’t_ and now they’ve reached some tipping point. And there has to be something she can _use_. She looks around, and there's nothing.

“I’m not going to let that happen.”

"You're insane. Stay the hell away from me." Mara takes a step back--

Finds she can’t _move_.

She gasps, her heart beat stuttering, squeezes her eyes shut, she can't run, so she breathes in deeply, draws herself in.

Her master’s voice gains an astounding clarity over the roar of her blood in her ears.

_Never have I met such a singular child, one so attuned to my voice. In a sea of stones, you are a gem._

The Jedi is saying something, but his voice is far, far away. 

Something else unfurls within her head, she recoils, but it's everywhere. It's foreign. It's wrong. It shouldn't be here. 

And this she can do: retreat even deeper within, wrap herself around her master's power. She'd just done it this morning. She's been doing it for days. Weeks. Years.

A soft tug. _You need to let go._

Mara stays as she is.

A harder pull. Uncomfortable.

She wraps herself tighter around it. The seed. Her master's power. Her gift. Everything else melts away as it should. She draws into her master's power within her deeper still, understands in one glittering moment: It is well and good that she should perish holding on to her master's seed of power and being held by it in turn. It's a sacrifice. An honor.

Hadn't the Jedi said that if she didn't let it go, it'd take her with it?

It's not even a choice.

She is not afraid.

Then the tearing starts.


	9. Chapter 9

  


####  WET SEASON

  


_The implosion of love into death and of death into love reaches its highest expression in the unbearable grief of madness...While she does not die as he does, while she outlasts their dead love, she nevertheless becomes _like_ a dead woman -- severed from others, and from time..._ [[x](http://teagrl.tumblr.com/post/177048677232/the-implosion-of-love-into-death-and-of-death-into)]

  
  
_There's a sea secret in me_  
_It's plain to see, it is rising_ [[x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhGETVlOM0Y)]  


  


  


##### VIII. Plummet

  


* * *

2.11  
  
~~They say the largest kybers were held and worshiped at the Jedi's secret temples in ancient times. The foundations of the Jedi's powers for the thousands of years they were ascendant may be found there. In those mysterious and distant places, they say a select few unlocked unfathomable powers over matter. They say some managed to unweave the fabric of time itself.  
If this were true, they would have been gods. How could they have fallen if they'd known?~~

* * *

  


  


A throb at the back of her skull wakes her up. She blinks, aware of herself curled into a tight ball on a soft surface. What happened? Where is she? The light hurts her eyes too much for her to keep them open for more than a few seconds.

Just the act of closing them triggers a terrible sensation beyond the pain in her head. Now gone from throbbing to piercing, she senses something else, a hollowness...somewhere. It becomes worse when she twitches into movement. She stills.

Sounds from a distance. It hurts even more when she tries to make them make sense, so she stops and drifts away. 

* * *

She hears the door open, the sound jarring, but she doesn’t move from where she lies on her side, curled in on herself. 

Footsteps. 

“Mara?”

She doesn't know how long she's been aware. Long enough to know something is wrong. Something painful happened. Can it happen again? Mara curls tighter, shell-like. It’s too soon. Not again. Phantom pain thuds at her temples. Not now. Her vision's blurry, which makes everything worse. Easier to just keep her eyes closed.

“How do you feel?” The voice is very near. Too near.

She doesn’t answer.

“Feel up to eating? It's just broth.” Shuffling sounds.

Departing footsteps. 

He hasn't left the room. 

She doesn’t know how she knows, doesn’t know how she knows when he’s gone, but she does. Very slowly she uncurls and slides back into the dark.

* * *

She wakes up again. Time and circumstances jumble in her head. She wasn’t always here, was she? She was in another room, maybe -- was it the living room? -- and now, she’s lying on her side. On a bed? The sheets are different, a light blue color, but the details around her don't seem as defined. 

Something's wrong with her.

Her head's sore. Mara forces herself to take stock. 

Something crawling up her -- no _she's_ crawling up? Where? Inside. Where she's hungry. But she isn't. She's vigilant. She's completely tranquil, rooted. Outside. Currents in the air speak of -- the dirt under her -- _the jungle has eyes_ \-- those eyes are _her_ \--

A wave of vertigo and Mara heaves, her throat constricting at the onslaught of unrooted perceptions. She manages to roll and retches over the side of her bed. 

The sound of footsteps growing louder and faster as she sags down. Everything goes black.

* * *

“Mara.”

She jars awake. Tries to sit up and can’t, her limbs are too heavy, the pain at her head beginning its slow thud. She blinks at the cream-colored sheets. The window with the cluster of trees. Light outside. Nothing is familiar for a second. Recognition hits soon after like a blow. She's in the room. The last she remembers-- the living room where the Jedi --

_Take it out._

_Destroy it._

Take stock. She needs --

“Don’t.” The warning is followed by a touch on her shoulder that she tries to jerk away from with a low sound. Her body responds like it's waterlogged. The only thing that really answers quickly is a slow throb at her head. 

“Give yourself more time, you’ll overload again otherwise. You feel up to eating? Just a little? It's broth, nothing heavy.”

Her breaths are starting to come faster. Why can she barely move? Something’s wrong. Very wrong. She’s not working. Her body isn’t working--

“Easy. Easy. You’re okay. You're okay, Mara. This is all temporary.”

But her mind, sluggish as it is, knows something is wrong. Everything is wrong. That it was _him_. 

Something was done to me.

And he did it.

The urge to run wells up inside her, rises fast and pushes an sharp ache into her skull. 

"You're okay, Mara. Mara--"

The Jedi is talking, but pain keeps swelling behind her eyes, threatening to burst her lids open. The pressure builds and builds, floods her mind, floods everything as she tries to scramble away, her body refusing to cooperate. All of her thoughts shatter.

Black.

* * *

Mara wakes with a gasp. She’s on a bed. Tepid illumination reveals a window in front of her. It’s dark outside, difficult to make out anything.

She blinks once and again. She’s not sure where she is. A grunt leaves her as she sits up. It’s...not easy. Her limbs have been transformed into lead. 

It comes back to her, what happened...

She closes her eyes and turns her head. The lamp on the bedside table is what provides the light. It looks vaguely familiar, but Mara doesn’t trust familiarity. Something was done to her, she knows. Something painful.

Flashes of images, sounds, sensations whirl around her head: a touch at her forehead, acrid taste of bile, a cool towel against her, a needle at her arm, being carried, the smell of smoke, ripping pain behind her eyes, a snake biting her shoulder, a feeling like staunching a wound but the agony sharpening, grinning dead alien, animal screeching. It’s too hard to distinguish what’s memory and what isn’t.

And maybe she doesn't want any of it.

Mara takes a shaky breath. Something was done to her. That's enough. Something was done to her.

She didn't die.

She concentrates and reaches within.

Her eyes fly open.

* * *

There's a soft knock on the door later when it's light out. Mara doesn’t move from where she lies on her side though her pulse races. She's come to find out that moving just triggers a massive headache and avoids it as much as she can.

Footsteps. “How are you feeling?”

The Jedi.

Her lips tighten. “Wha’d you do to me?” Her tongue's thick and the words mash together. She grimaces at how stupid she sounds.

“What you're feeling is a reaction to the loss of the mindlink," he says neutrally. "You're...resetting. You’ll feel better in a few days once you get used to being without it." He nears her bed, his voice closer. "It’s good you’re fully conscious again." The last carries a note of relief that shoots dread through her. "‘Fresher?”

The Jedi sits on the edge of her bed with jarring familiarity, and Mara jerks away on instinct, her whole body exploding in a sudden ache. He quickly stands.

_Take it out._

_Destroy it._

He did this to her.

"You'll feel more like yourself in a few days," he repeats evenly, almost warily. "This is going to pass."

Mara closes her eyes. She needs to get through this. She’s trained. This kind of thing happens all the time.

"The mindlink must have had a...regulatory function. When you drew on the Force it must have been more than you were prepared for."

 _Second by second,_ a voice whispers. _Survival happens second by second, minute by minute._

"Seems to be better now. With care, you'll be back to feeling like yourself."

If she were caught in a situation she might not be able to escape, being too young, too inexperienced.

"Like anything rest, eating, exercise, little by little. The mindlink...wasn't isolated, it...affected a great deal of your...mental terrain."

This situation.

_The Empire continues after you. Your life spills for it. Do not be afraid._

"The Force -- it's bound up with everything that makes us, well, us. That includes the physical."

With slow torturous movements, she pulls herself to a sitting position. 

"The mindlink was never supposed to be there. Your connection to the Force will normalize by itself relatively quickly. We should focus on helping the rest of you normalize along with it."

Her head swims, she has to concentrate on her breathing to dial back the throbbing pain all over her.

"Just like with any recovery rest, eating, exercise. This-- this is good. You're doing good."

She blocks out everything, only focusing on her limbs. After a long moment, she tells herself, move one foot out of the bed. Move the other. Move your leg. She’s not looking at the Jedi, but sees the blur of him standing several feet away. He's fallen silent.

An interminable moment later she tries to stand. Her arm on the bed keeps her up when she teeters. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the Jedi reach out and stop himself.

She takes a few experimental steps, her hand on the bed, then the wall. It goes like that for a while until she gains a bit more confidence, navigating her way to the room through the wall. Finally, she reaches the armoire and the door, slowly sets off to the ‘fresher by herself. 

* * *

Second by second, minute by minute.

Mara has no idea how much time has passed. She'd noted the Jedi hasn't said for how long she has been in and out of consciousness. Sitting on the toilet, she examines her arms. Her scratches are completely gone so several days at the very least.

She crash landed again, lost something along the way.

No.

Something was taken from her. Torn away.

The link to her master, she knows. The seed --

A knock on the 'fresher door rouses her.

"Mara?" The call comes maybe a minute later.

She washes her hands quickly, her head swimming, legs shaking, and opens the door to find the Jedi there, a worried look on his face.

"You've been in there for a while...I just wanted to make sure you were okay. That you hadn't fallen or gotten sick."

Mara doesn't respond. The surreality has emptied all thoughts from her head. He did this to her.

If she keeps standing here, the thought surfaces from behind her awareness. She's going to fall. He's not crowding the doorway so she stumbles into movement. But she's teetering, the floor rushing up. The Jedi grasps her arm. She yanks it away with a low animal sound and she's falling.

She's stopped.

The same pressure--

Her heart's pounding so hard it might crack her rib cage open. She thinks she's on the ground now, doesn't know what happened . She can't move. She's curling into herself, bracing herself--

"Mara. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Mara."

She shuts her eyes. Pain. Ripping pain. Painpainpain. 

"You're okay. You're okay. Just breathe. Nothing's happening. You're -- you're on the floor. I'm over here. You're okay. You can get up. You're okay. You're okay--"

It's a different kind of fade than before, she thinks when she can finally think. White to the black. She can float in it for a while.

"Mara, can you get up?" It's close to a whisper. Tentative. "It'd be good if you could get up. Can you?"

The Jedi.

"You'll be more comfortable in the bed -- or the sofa, just not on the floor. It can't be comfortable."

She doesn't open her eyes. Can't.

"I can help you up--" She shoves herself back half clawing on the ground, another involuntary sound ripped from her throat when her back collides with a hard surface. "Okay, no. No." The Jedi's holding his hands up, sitting at the end of the hall, several paces from her. "I've been all the way here. I'll stay here. I'm staying here. I haven't moved. See. I won't--"

She closes her eyes again, her stomach clenching and it's really beyond her control. She turns her head to the other side, hunches over, and vomits. 

* * *

Mara loses time. It's better that way. Her limbs don't hurt so much, her stomach isn't as sore.

There wasn't that much in her stomach anyway. She's aware again of herself staring blankly at the opposite wall, but also...disappearing. She'd disappeared for a while.

"Mara." That same small voice from the Jedi pulls her back. "Mara. You can rest in the room. I have -- I should clean up. Can you get up?"

If she doesn't move, she knows, he'll move her himself. The thought makes her inhale and straighten up, though it's a struggle. Just imagining getting to her feet is like climbing a mountain, but she has to before the Jedi approaches. Like before, she tells herself, one foot, then the next. She manages an eternity later, a hand on the wall. She never imagined the 'fresher being so far from the room, but it's an unbelievable amount of effort to make it there. The Jedi walks behind her at a distance.

She collapses on the bed, rolls to her side. Away. Towards the window.

"I'm getting you a fresh tunic, okay?" the Jedi calls. Sounds of movement from in the room filter through her mind. "I'll leave it here, so you can change. Let me get you a wet washcloth."

Mara stays very still until all movement ceases and she doesn't sleep as much as pull that disappearing act from before.

A tentative knock.

"Dinner? It's just broth. You should eat something -- that earlier, part of it was because you haven't had a meal for a while. It'll help to try and get that back on track." She stiffens as he nears. "I'm just putting it on the table." 

Eat, she thinks dimly. Yes, she should eat. She rolls to her back and with difficulty, shifts to a sitting position. Off at her peripheral vision she sees him standing staring at her.

"I don't want you to get sick again," he says solemnly. "Just have what you can stomach." 

She reaches for the wet washcloth first and washes her face with it. Truthfully, there hadn't been a whole lot in her stomach. The mess was probably minimal. Looking down at herself she doesn't see anything on her.

Mara reaches for the plastoid bowl on autopilot and drinks it down. There's a disgusting taste in her mouth, but she'll take that over ending up on the floor again. More than that she can't really think about now. She's down to primal functions. The present is the liquid she's swallowing. The future is making it to the 'fresher and back. Only that.

She finishes the whole bowl without incident, wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve, lays back on the bed, and closes her eyes.

* * *

When she opens her eyes again, it's dark outside the window save for a distant glimmer. Her whole body is sore and there's a moment of profound disorientation when she thinks she's back in her room, moonlight trickling through a window. She gropes around for light at her bedside table with a sinking feeling. The light turns on at a low setting, the chiaroscuro of the room where she sleeps, where the Jedi has kept her adding to her confusion. Her thoughts too have a half lit quality, only her immediate ones are bright. The 'fresher. She needs to get to the 'fresher.

Very slowly she slides her legs out, tries a step and another until she's at the 'fresher. She makes it back, more stable than she remembers being earlier. She changes and looks for where she's scratched out the days behind the bed and forces herself to count them.

It gets as high as thirty-two, then there's no more. A powerful, vertiginous feeling washes over her as she runs the number in her head. Thirty-two. She lifts a hand and traces the last scratch, the feeling anchoring itself in her throat.

Something was done to me in whatever days I didn't mark. I lost them. I lost -- 

It's not that she'd forgotten. It's that the fact is almost too huge to hold in her mind when she looks at it directly.

_Survival happens second by second, minute by minute._

She can't look at it. Not at the _what_. It doesn't even matter anymore. What matters is an accounting, grain by grain. A full assessment of damages. She breathes in deeply and crawls back in bed. She can't plan if she doesn't know where things stand.

* * *

Morning finds her still looking within herself, possible now that her head doesn't hurt as much. She spends her time searching and searching, breaking for a 'fresher run, which had gone smoothly. After, she's back in bed, making her account. The Jedi had taken her connection to her master. A mindlink, he'd called it. The seed of power within her.

He'd torn it out.

She accepts the fact of the Jedi ripping it out. Undoubtedly this happened. 

But.

It's not gone. It can’t be gone. She's alive. It's part of her. So it has to be somewhere. Hiding.

Something inside her isn't right, but it wouldn't be, not after what happened. Doesn't mean it's _gone_. A gift from her master, surely he'd made it so it can't be gone. Not that easily.

A knock at her door.

"How are you feeling?"

Her pulse races and she's paralyzed.

"You changed. That's good." She glances at him from the corner of her eye and he's holding a bowl. "I have breakfast. Hot cereal. I thought we might keep it to liquids for a while, though if you feel up to solid food just let me know. It might be better. More calories, not as boring. I'll put the bowl on the table, all right?"

Mara stays frozen as he does. He steps back after.

"Mara," he clears his throat, "I...I'm sorry it -- I'm sorry it was as painful as it was. It wasn't at all what I -- what I intended. The...the hold you had on it...I'm--I have to check that it's gone--but that won't be now," he adds quickly. "When you're a little better. I know it's hard on you. I don't...I wish it wasn't. I wish you'd never had it to begin with." 

He says other things too, but by then Mara has stopped listening. It's all inconsequential drivel. Either he's going to hurt her or isn't. He apparently isn't now. Anything else is irrelevant right now. Finally he leaves. Mara reaches for the bowl and the plastoid spoon. Her coordination is off, but she uses the spoon. Another tiny triumph.

After, Mara spends her time contemplating within. That seed of power. Where? Where? It can't be gone. She's still here.

The Jedi knocks on her door, announces he's picking up the bowl and makes inane conversation she doesn't register. He's not going to hurt her now. The rest doesn't matter. 

She stares sightlessly at the dark of the ceiling, her focus ruins easily. It makes everything more difficult.

A knock on her door. The Jedi's back with another meal. Soup. Mara downs it. She ambles to the 'fresher after her leaves then settles back to keep searching within herself.

Over hours she goes deeper and what she finds -- 

Nothing.

She locks her jaw. A gem, her master had said. A gem. Because of this. So it has to be within, just...hiding.

Another knock. No hurt. Another meal, bracketted by the Jedi's talk. She eats for the broken machine of her body. She eats to keep searching. It's dark outside, that vague shimmer always at the distance.

Endless moments later, she finds _something_ within herself, perceives it as a tiny, jagged thing.

Oh, she thinks. _Oh_. It's like an exhale, the universe of her relief as she folds herself around it anew. Her eyes prickle with tears, an upswell of gratitude. 

_I knew you wouldn't leave me._

* * *

There's more fragments. Mara amasses them.

She finds herself leaning on what the Jedi had said -- a link. These are parts of a link. Between her master and her. It makes it easier to visualize what she perceives. She'd seen it as a seed, and while she can bring herself around them that way, it's not enough. These are fragments, and when she holds them there are gaps, which are wrong. There should be no gaps. It should be a seamless fit between them and her, so that there's no distinction when she holds them, just _her_.

Mara tries to look at the fragments like a frayed rope.

Threads, she pulls away to run the image over in her mind. Torn thread can be mended. It's a matter of ties. 

Can this too...? Of course it can.

Mara reaches for the glass of water at her bedside table and drinks it down.

Visualization was a matter of shutting things out, to _perceive_ , she realizes. That's the point. And once you perceive, you can better target your will.

Mara sinks into herself with a breath. She can't manipulate the external world, she wouldn't even know where to begin, but this is her mind. She can do anything here.

Even become thread. A thread that ties anew.

 _I am thread_ , she tells the fragments, _and that's what you are as well._

 _I'll make us fit back together again_.

* * *

Several days pass, measured in meals and light. The Jedi checks in on her too often, asks her how she’s feeling with a breezy tone that's blatantly artificial. He floats the idea of going outside several times. She stays curled on her side, her back to him in silence. He leaves her the datapad on the table, saying she can use it now. She doesn't touch it.

Mara focuses on sustenance and the question of whether he'll hurt her again. If the answer to the latter is no, the Jedi doesn't matter. There's only the fragmented skein of her mind, the whole of her will thrust toward one thing, reconstruction. She doesn't even go back to marking off the days. There is no past, no future, just this endless present of _work_. 

Mara focuses on fragments, and the edges of herself. Light goes light and dark and light and several cycles of meals pass before she finally understands how to manipulate within. Another victory. Before when she'd started neither her goals nor her drive had been as clear, not the way it is now.

She'd never devoted the whole of her days to it.

Ever so slowly she also figures out how to tie what she sees as the ends. Even with her newfound eyes for this, the ties are clumsy and haphazard.

It's a start.

After a 'fresher break, she pads back to the room and finds the Jedi there waiting. He's usually brief in his visits; the break in the pattern makes alarm shoot up as she climbs back on the bed. Mara shifts to lie on her side and away as usual, focuses on the blue sheets. 

He says in that careful, even voice, “I’m going to need to check that the mindlink is gone -- like I told you. This kind of thing has a tendency to...persist. I think you should...” he stumbles a bit. "I think you're well enough for it. It'll be quick and that's it. It'll be done. All of it. And I won't ever go into your mind again."

A shiver runs down her spine, the pulse of phantom pain beating in her head again, a wave of nausea rolls over her. She squeezes her eyes tight and wills it away, part of her dismayed at her reaction, as if she's a weak little thing. She's a trained operative. An Imperial agent.

But she's like a different person, a person she _hates_ , when she whispers, her voice scratchy from disuse, “You're gonna hurt me again.” 

“No. No.” His voice comes back choked tight for a second. “That's done, this is just a final check. I’m reasonably certain, but...I don't want to miss anything. Not after all you went through, especially. It...it needs to be gone.”

Her stomach falls. She stiffens, reeling in horrified inevitability. The fact of it is suddenly too large to fit in her head again. She can do nothing --

He’s in her mind in an instant. A half formed memory surfaces of an alien presence in her mind. And pain. Ripping pain.

That had started everything. Mara remains frozen. Her heart beats a staccato rhythm. She squeezes her eyes closed and -- shocked disbelief, horror.

“What did you do?" he gasps not a second later, the words leaving him in a rush. “No, Mara. It’s-- it’s wrong.” He falls silent mid-sentence before recuperating. Tonelessly, he says, “I need to take out what's left.”

She breaks from the spell to turn around to face him for the first time in days, pushing herself up on her forearms. There's a part of her that wants to curl into a ball, but she can't _let_ this happen to her.

“No.” Panic has turned her blood to ice. Her hands shake. Not again. “No. It’s al-already gone.”

“A fragment--”

Mara shakes her head. “Just a tiny piece. It doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t make a difference at all. I-I-I don’t feel it anymore. You don’t have to take it out. You don’t.” It's getting harder to breathe, but her life _depends_ on this. “Please, don’t. Please. There’s nothing.” She shakes her head again and whispers, “There’s nothing. Nothing.”

A pained expression crosses his face. The Jedi takes one step towards her. “Mara--”

Mara jerks back on the bed, lifts a trembling, accusing hand. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me again.” Her vision blurs and she wipes her eyes clumsily, drawing a heavy breath. She can't go through it again.

He freezes.

“You-you said that.” She puts two and two together at breakneck speed. If the Jedi holds any sort of compunction, then maybe she can buy herself time. She stammers out of calculation this time,“You-you said you meant me no harm. Over and over. You said it.”

“I _don’t_ mean you any harm," he says, a lost expression in his face, before he gathers his composure. "The mindlink, it's evil--”

“You _hurt_ me.” She shifts away more, hating the childishness of the statement. This is not her language of wrongs. " _That's_ evil."

It might be his.

Sure enough, color drains from his face.

“You said you meant me no harm.” Her voice grows stronger, even though now she’s shaking all over. It’s an act. The tears she that track down her face are a ruse. To save my life. She raises her face so he can see. It's the best performance of her life. Almost not a performance at all. “And you hurt me. Just now you said it wouldn’t hurt, but it will. It will. You'll hurt me again.” 

His face squeezes. “If you could understand--”

Desperation knifes within her. “You said it wouldn’t hurt!”

His expression grows blank. “It'll take everything from you. I won't let it. I can't--”

“You said it wouldn’t hurt!" It's a shriek, hysterical and horrible. "You said -- ”

“It needs to be gone.” 

“No,” she whispers, her face crumpling. “Please don’t.” She’s swinging one leg down off the mattress. It wobbles, but she tries the other, not breaking eye contact, as if he’s about to pounce at any second. 

“Please.” She holds on to the edge of the bed, lifting her hands, a quelling gesture. “You -- you said,” she softens her voice “--you said that.” Mara wipes her face again. 

He shuts his eyes, blankness cracking. “If I give you time--”

“Yes,” she nods effusively, taking one step back, then another. “Time. Just a little time.”

He speaks as if to himself, eyes haunted when he opens them. “It’s not going to be any better. It's not.”

“No, it’s not,” the words rush out of her like a flood as she slinks back, one more step, one more, “I just have to get used to it, little by little. Just a little time. Please. Please.” She falters, then splutters out the next words, “Then it might not hurt -- as much. Please.” 

She’s begging now, she knows, and it’s horrible, but it's about holding on to the edges of the dream, her return. A gem. Just a little time to figure out a way. It’s not all lost. Her master can fix it. There remains enough of it to fix. Her master can do anything. 

The Jedi's face is ashen as he whispers, “I’m so sorry. If there was any other way--”

“No!” She stops the scream before it’s begun. A memory comes to her, of the Jedi’s furtive glances, that first _desperate_ happiness when she’d come to half a lifetime ago. Incredulous wonder. Another step.

She's by the wall now. Trapped. The tone of his voice when he'd called her clever. Her trembling hands go to the hem of her tunic, baring her stomach. Swiftly, she pulls the shirt over her head.

He averts his face and his voice flattens into a tone she’s never heard from him. “Put your clothing back on, Mara.”

There’s a sour taste in her mouth. She didn’t just imagine those hidden glances, the longing in them. 

“Time,” she whispers, tries for grace in the gesture, her fingertips to wipe the tears, not the back of her hand. She evens her voice. “Just a little bit of time. I’ll cooperate. I’ll do anything, anything you want.” For her master, this is nothing at all. 

“Put the shirt back on,” the Jedi says slowly, dangerously, his face still turned away.

She’s losing this, she thinks. 

“I-I have--” Inconsequential knowledge just to buy more time? “Intelligence! You can take that back to your Rebellion! Just time! Please!”

"No, Mara." His face twists again. "I don't--I've _never_ \--" 

He can sense deceit. She shuts her eyes and there’s a sob lodged in her throat. Nothing matters more than leaving this moment with the hope to go back.

“Whatever you want to know! I know codes, base locations, suppliers. Anything you want to know.” She covers her face, tamping down on her sob, but can't help crying out her disgust, the sheer wretchedness of herself now. Her master would understand. He would. She's precious to him. Her gift makes her more precious than all the intelligence in the universe. He would understand.

“Just go...and--and you can come back -- later.” She can't go through that pain again. She can't. She'll do anything not to go through it again. To keep what she has of herself intact. “Please!”

“I can’t,” he whispers.

* * *

When she comes to later, her head hurts like there’s a hole in it and her throat is sandpaper, her screaming echoing in her ears. Worst of all there’s that overwhelming feeling of loss. Emptiness, like that's all there is. Absolute.

She registered the Jedi there when she faded in and out of consciousness, but he’s left.

Mara shifts. It’s light outside her window, so she can see the blue sheets.

Her greatest gift. Her greatest talent. Her future. Nothing remains of it. Not even a dream. All gone.

_In a sea of stones, you are a gem._

She’s a stone now. Her master has enough stones. He has no use for another.

Mara looks up at the ceiling and wishes she were dead.


	10. Chapter 10

##### IX. Interoception

  


  


* * *

  
4.5  


I know the Force only as a sense of transcendent mystery. What must it be like for it not to be so glaringly other?  
G. continues probing the crystal. The crystal stymies him, continues resisting him. Does it not see that we seek goodness? he asks as if it could respond.  He may believe it can. Neither alive nor dead matter, G. says. It is something in between. A bridge. An oracle.  
Is it that we, who cannot touch the Force, are not meant to touch the crystal? Perhaps some knowledge is meant to be forever lost to us.  
G. will never accept this. 

* * *

~~~~

  


  


The days bleed into each other in a sun-lit nothingness, followed by a dark nothingness, and again. Mara barely opens her eyes. Barely moves. 

Her world has gone monochrome. 

The Jedi's taken to sitting on the floor by her bed and talking, but his words are only low level noise in the larger static of nothing. There’s no point to routines. She ignores the food he brings her, the clothing he leaves at her bedside table. Her head throbs steadily like her heartbeat's poison to it, her body consumed by a pain she can’t pin down. Sometimes it’s in her joints, in her back, in her neck. She spends her time in bed drowning in a murky haze. 

His hand on her arm pushes her out of her stupor. She flinches and jerks away. 

“Mara, it's been several meals,” he speaks hesitantly, “You need to eat something.”

She doesn’t move.

* * *

Time crawls forward.

The Jedi is ever-present now. He keeps up a near-constant one-sided conversation. Sometimes, a bit of what he says trickles into her awareness, soldering the wrong parts in servomotors, getting caught in a sandstorm. Most of it is still background noise around a cloud of numbness.

The notes of a classical symphony ring in the air.

Something in her wrings tight, hurts, intolerable, and she opens her mouth, her voice cracks in word-like sounds. "Off. Turn it. Off."

The recording switches off.

“You recognize it?” 

It's vaguely familiar, but thankfully, no. 

“I thought you’d like it.”

That’s what she’d done after her first success, the memory emerges. The symphony. A lifetime ago. It sticks in her throat. This is more than failure. You can come back from failure. She thinks of aquamarine and shimmersilk, but no. She can't think of it. She can't. 

She closes her eyes.

He whispers, “You need to eat."

* * *

It seems like the Jedi never leaves. His voice continues in the margins of her awareness, story after story. The few times meaning penetrates, she realizes they’re anecdotes: the mess he made in his aunt’s kitchen when he tried to cook her a stew for her name day, his uncle hating it when he took his shoes off and walked barefoot, hunting six foot rats in a junker. 

Throughout, Mara stays where she is, wishing him gone, but too drained to do anything about it. Maybe it’s fitting punishment, for her to be here surrounded by tales of a madman’s childhood in an Outer Rim nowhere. The words buzz around her for a while, gnats around the numbness that soon descends on her like a shroud. It's noise then. 

“I knew someone like you."

She doesn’t know why she hears this, but numbness creeps along, not that far behind. Wait for it. Wait.

It always comes.

“She was so...determined.” His voice sounds oddly strangled. “And precise and...She liked these crackers that had a weird taste almost like kari root but not. Her boss would send them to her when she couldn't...I saw her finish a whole box in one sitting once. I never asked her where she got them from -- where she first had them." He falls silent for a long moment, when he speaks again, his voice is quieter. “It’s such a small thing to remember. She...she really liked them. She'd probably say they were just crackers. Not important at all.”

He inhales sharply, stands and she hears his footsteps as he leaves the room.

It should feel better for him to go, but it doesn’t. If that cloud of the numbness is thick enough, it's all the same.

* * *

“It's broth.” His voice is close. She goes rigid for a second in spite of herself. Bedside table. He withdraws, voice further. “It's in a mug. All you have to do is drink it. You haven’t eaten anything in days.” A note of alarm has grown as constant under the words as his presence has in the room. “You'll feel better when you do. You will.”

She doesn’t answer and several beats pass.

“She said--she said it felt like...a hollowness in her head. The woman I knew...like you.”

Mara closes her eyes. She wills the statement into the ether, but it lingers insidiously until she can’t help herself.

Lying. He’s trying to get her to eat in some roundabout way. “Wasn’t anyone else like me.”

“You’re right. There _isn’t_ ,” he replies, at once emphatic and very matter of fact, “There isn’t anyone like you. Mara, you need to eat. You need to have something. Even if it's just a sip.”

She doesn’t move.

* * *

Time continues its slow, dreamless inch forward.

“You haven’t showered in a while,” he notes in another amorphous later. “I think...you might feel better if you do. At least take a bath. All you'd need to do is climb in, then climb out. Okay? You might feel up to eating after.”

She wouldn’t move, except that in the back of her mind an idea starts to take shape. As the Jedi rambles on about the luxuries of water for tubs the idea becomes a plan. She shifts to her back, her eye perching on the mug beside her bedside table -- home plastoid like everything, harder than the utensils, but near impossible to break. Transitory still, as if everything's passing through. To be used and disposed of, cycled back in the compost with the added chemicals to speed up the process, leaving no trace. She envies it as much as one can envy an inanimate object.

But Mara remembers now that there’s a mirror above the sink in the 'fresher. She’s never thought about it before. How stupid of her. She’ll need to act fast and her reflexes are shot. Before, she could have used her fist, but there's no point of thinking of _then_...The small tug of hope she feels doesn't so much as pierce the numb nothingness as glint off it the way light does on a non-reflective surface.

Very slowly, she sits up. The Jedi, sitting on the floor by her bed as he tends to, stumbles in whatever he's saying, but appears to pick up the thread he's on. He keeps going as if nothing has changed.

She slides her feet out and reaches for the mug. The Jedi’s eyes move towards it, but he continues his meandering commentary on luxury tubs. He glances in her direction, glances elsewhere. Back to her again.

Mara's hand closes on the mug's handle, pulls the mug to her lap. She looks down at it without really seeing it. It's got soup, broth, gruel whatever he wants her to eat inside. She lifts it and forces down a sip, in full view, unaware of what she's swallowing, and stands. The Jedi's voice rises a bit as he himself stands, grows more upbeat as he walks in front of her out the door, towards the 'fresher.

In the ‘fresher, she waits, shoulders slumped forward, messy hair over her face, staring at the floorboards as he sits on the edge of the tub, filling it up while prattling. When the tub is about half full, he turns off the faucet, stands and leaves, closing the door behind him.

The first thing she does is turn the water back on. She'd moved too fast and her vision swims, making her sway. She stabilizes herself against the wall, and turns her attention to the mirror. 

What stares back is skeletal, hollow-cheeked, dull-eyed, and stringy maned, as foreign as anything nightmarish from back when she could dream. Half-dead already, it'd be a mercy to finish it off. It smiles grotesquely, a taunt.

Mara takes a deep breath and pummels the mirror with the mug, turning her face away. Liquid sloshes out, over the mirror, over her hand, the side of her face. Too loud even with the gushing water from the tub. When she pulls back the mirror's splintered into a circular pattern, shards all over the sink and counter, the creature's freakish spawn scowling at her.

That's all right. Mara drops the cup. She'll get them all. She paws at the glass, finds a piece large enough to hold on to. Her fingers ooze red as she tightens her grip. She'll get _all_ of them.

The door opens with a jerk. "Mara, you oka --Mara!"

The shard is too small, hard to hold with her hands, slippery. It doesn't go deep enough into her neck, she pulls anyway across, again and again--

A hard slap at her arm. The shard flies out, red splatters the mirror. 

Mara slips on the water flowing over her feet. She throws herself forward for another piece, scrabbling fingers leaving crimson smears on the counter, the mirror. Grip on her shoulders. She's got one. Pulling her back. She's got one. Has to. 

She shoves the shard into her mouth. Choke it. Choke it. Choke it do--

The world flickers out.

* * *

_Tunnel lights burst in his vision, blinding white. Just as quickly, were gone as they exited the tunnel, the night sky back before them._

_"No, really," Mara said from the pilot's seat, taking a curve around a triangular cloudcutter. "What is the most ridiculous thing about Jedi you've heard?"_

_"Oh, it's too hard to narrow down." Mara accelerated more, weaving between a set of three speeders until she left them behind. She piloted a speeder much like she piloted her ships, that same kind of steadiness._

_Confidence, Luke thought as she turned her head to him for a second, not quite smiling but buoyant all the same, tendrils of her loose hair framing her face. Right in her element._

_"The mind reading can't count."_

_He made a face. "Not with how much I hear it. And it's not... ridiculous," he granted. "Just wrong."  
_

_"I used to think that." She smirked, took another curve, punching the throttle as soon as they were out of it, zooming along the skylanes, diving in and out of the traffic.  
_

_Even imagining her thinking that was bizarre. Clearly a tease, going by that smirk. "You did not."  
_

_"I did." She lifted her chin. Completely a tease. They'd come up to the maglev and flew alongside it for a few moments before leaving it behind as they gained more altitude. "Sorcerers with their powers of mindreading and precognition."  
_

_He snorted at her, laughing now, at the incongruous image, maybe a little giddy from the speed, the kaleidoscopic city and speeder lights all around. Hard to imagine her, of all people, taken by stories. "You did not."  
_

_Her smile broadened. "Sorcerers who can bend time and space."  
_

_"Oh, come on," he groaned, still laughing. "You know the Force doesn't work that way."  
_

_She arched an eyebrow at him, baiting. "And if it could?"  
_

_He shrugged, tilting his head. It didn't.  
_

_"I wouldn't change anything," she said lightly as they sped past a few speeder trucks, dashing between two skyways.  
_

_"A good choice." She cut another speeder off sharply enough that it flashed its lights at them in a rude pattern, but, really, when you flew that slow in a city skylane...Luke shook his head at it. "All the stories talk about the hazards of changing things. Make it so your past self eats cereal instead of toast in the morning and two systems over a world goes nova."  
_

_Her mouth twisted, exasperated but amused too. "Not what I meant, Skywalker."  
_

_"Yeah?" They came up on city center traffic and she started decelerating. Traffic was denser; regulations would be more strictly enforced here.  
_

_"If everything gets you here, I don't know..." She turned her head to meet his eyes, and gave a careless shrug that he knew was not really careless at all. "It's not a bad place to be."_

_Luke smiled. "No, it's not."_

* * *

Mara wakes up on the bed. Her hair is damp, and she feels slightly chilly. She shifts and realizes that her hand under his, the Jedi’s. He sits at the edge of the bed by her legs. His eyes are closed. There’s an odd feeling in her head like a soft murmur, familiar, but not. Soothing. 

She turns her attention to the Jedi. She doesn’t think he’s sleeping. His posture's too rigid.

His eyes flutter open and he withdraws his hand. He sighs, but doesn’t speak as he watches her.

Gradually, the soothing feeling fades. That hollowness in her mind, a crushing silence. A split second later memories rise up--

“Easy,” he murmurs. “Little by little.”

Weirdly enough, she knows what he’s talking about. It’s about controlling their flow. Stopping them. She brings a hand to her neck. The shard. She inhales. There’s only skin there.

“I healed the cuts. Your hands took the brunt of it. And your...," he lifts a hand in front of him, draws it down, his expression closed, "mouth."

Mara examines her palms. They’re unmarred. Healed. Feels her chin and lips. Normal.

The emptiness in her head. The absolute absence of her master’s power within her. She lets her hands fall. How she could have forgotten? What has he done to her now? She had seen her hand in his and had done _nothing_ \--

The Jedi stands from the bed but approaches her. “It's okay." His arms lift a little towards her as he radiates the same lunatic evenness. "You're going to be okay.”

Lies. As Mara drops her gaze back down at her hands, a vague memory surfaces. The woman he’s mentioned once or twice. 

“You lie to her too?" she croaks without raising her eyes. "The one who was _like me_. She dead? She is, isn't she? How lucky. So lucky." And she can’t stop saying it, “Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.” 

And she’s laughing now, at nothing, at everything. Laughing until she’s crying because it’s the funniest thing, the way the word sounds from her lips, now empty of meaning, degenerating to clacking consonants. She laughs until she’s sobbing, bending down to press her wet face against the sheets, her head muzzy and aching, wishing this nightmare would _end_.

Once her vision clears, her head and stomach sore, she straightens up, wanting him gone, but he’s still there, glassy-eyed, and she sees him blinking, turning his face away once he sees her looking. He puts a bit more distance between them, an extra step away. 

He clears his throat several times, says, “I'm not completely certain about all the mindlink does, but it...it appears to create a dependency, I think.” His voice sounds strange, a thicker, and he's not looking at her now either. “You might have had a propensity to forming these sort of connections, even from before, that was...exploited. The mindlink itself would only intensify that...tendency, so apart from the initial wound there might be...withdrawal symptoms or something similar. I’m not sure. The last instance of this I saw was not a...a living mindlink. I only saw...what it left. Not a...clean break. It was...” his voice drops, "different."

None of it makes sense. Questions threaten to burst out of her mouth and Mara forces them to stay unsaid. She doesn’t care. None of it matters.

“You react...positively,” he sums up neutrally, “to connection.”

Mara reaches within herself, suddenly alarmed. There’s that emptiness, but... “You didn’t--”

“No!” He shakes his head quickly, raising his hands as if to ward the suggestion away. “No! That was nothing like a mindlink. It’s...shallow. An easy connection to undo and I did. It’s gone. Just this once. You...” His voice catches and he doesn't continue.

I tried to kill myself. She drops her gaze. I tried to kill myself. I failed there too. 

“You should eat something," he says in the end, and more urgently. "You _need_ to eat something. Getting better starts there."

She shifts to her side, away.

“You won't feel like this forever. You won't. In the--in the previous...case, it couldn't have lasted that long, maybe a week. It's...been compounded because you're not...you need to eat. She'd--she'd been on the run and she still...got through it. What remained...you won't have that. Headaches, and voices for years and...You won't have that. You'll heal. You will. You'll live."

He’s pinning some dead girl’s shadow on her, it dawns on her. _That's_ the reason why he destroyed her future? It's too much. She can’t even take her own life to get away. She’d been brave enough for it. She’d been brave. Her throat tightens anew.

My life for the Empire...

She rolls to face him, meets his gaze head on.

“I hate you," she whispers slowly to the brittleness in his eyes. “I’m glad she’s dead. I hope she is. I hope you see her dead face in your mind until _you_ die.”

She quickly curls back onto her side, away. 

* * *

The Jedi leaves her alone after that. Mara thinks of Jedi and mind tricks. She's sinking. Why did she fail? Why?

And before long, the word _dependency_ whirls in her head.

Her master--

Her master couldn’t have intended this. The mindlink was never meant to be broken. It was part of her. The thought brings with it a well of grief, burning hot behind closed eyelids, dripping onto the pillow, and she turns her head to sob into it. She can’t go back. Not like this. Why had she failed?

Why had this happened to her?

She knows why.

She’s been taught exactly why over and over. The galaxy is a cruel place. Only the strong get to carry out their will. She'd never thought...she'd been a gem.

Talpini corpses grin at her.

This happened to her because she was weak.

* * *

Her world continues in monochrome, day and night barely different. The fog pulls her under slowly, inch by inch. The end result is the same as slitting her throat, she thinks. That's a comfort in this excruciating decline. 

She hadn't earned a clean end anyway.

It could be the next morning when the Jedi is at her door, or the next week. It’s light outside her window; she can’t tell much more than that. For a long time he stays by the threshold of her door. There's been no discernible pattern. Sometimes he comes in and sits, rambling like before she tried to kill herself, other times, he stays away, only watching her like he is now. Mara hates she doesn't have to look to know he's there. She curls up as soon as she senses him if she isn't already.

“I thought going outside might be good,” the Jedi offers quietly as he approaches her. "Let’s go outside.” 

She's about to say no when the world flickers out.

* * *

_  
The blue blade moved in a riposte counter-parry combination -- good, but not quite there._

_“Footwork is a little rough.” Luke deactivated his blade.“The angle of your hips to your feet is your weak point.”_

_She turned swiftly, red braid cutting through the air as she did, and shut off her own lightsaber. “How so?”_

_“It has to do with the strength you need to lunge. When your stance gets too narrow, you lose power.”_

_She made an irritated sound. “Moving like this, it doesn’t feel natural.”_

_He raised his eyebrows at her. “For a close quarters fighter, maybe.”_

_She took three steps, playfully lashing out with her hand, and looked up at him with a grin. “See? Natural.”_

_He laughed as he batted her away. “No one with even the smallest bit of lightsaber training would let you get that close. You have to earn it -- with all those unnatural stances.”_

_Her eyes glimmered, a yellow flecked green now that she was scant inches from him, but to his disappointment she dropped back half a step. "So tell me about this secret Jedi temple, Skywalker."_

_"They say--"_

_"No hearsay, now."_

_"Lore," he specified._

_"Oh," she flashed him a mock-contrite look, "my mistake."_

_"Lore," he resumed pointedly, "says there's a huge kyber crystal housed there."_

_"How big?"_

_He spread his arms. "Liftloader-sized."_

_"You're quoting from Jedi texts, I'm sure."_

_"Verbatim."_

_She laughed. "For decoration? I don't imagine you could chip pieces away for focusing crystals or could you?"_

_"I don't know. I don't know what the use is for a kyber crystal like that, but I'm guessing the temple itself might have more information. If that kyber even exists. Maybe it's just a story. Or maybe it's not there anymore. The Empire grabbed a lot of the kybers from the Jedi temples. I don't think there's that many outside of Palpatine's vaults. The temple's still worth a visit though. It's underground, within a cave network."_

_"That's the field trip?"_

_He threw her a grin. She'd seemed interested when he'd first suggested it, if he was reading her right, this was a yes. "Wouldn't want you to get bored on your leave."_

_"Your commitment to my entertainment is much appreciated," Mara reactivated her blade and dropped it to middle guard. "But _I'll_ make the arrangements. Last thing I want is to end up at some hovel without running water after I've spent days in some disgusting cave."_

_He switched his blade on, unable to wipe the grin off his face. Definitely a yes. "I don't know...a little shack in the jungle might have a certain charm, no?"_

_" _Nothing_ has charm without running water," she retorted. The rest was lost to the crack of her blade against his._

* * *

Light shines on her face, brightness, seeping through her closed eyelids and warms her skin. Mara opens her eyes, finding herself sitting on the steps of the veranda. Sunlight pours into the clearing around the cabin, trees diffusing winding shapes in the distance. Birds flit overhead, their trills cutting through the air. Off to the side in the distance she sees a large shadow. She's outside.

Mara opens her eyes and closes them several times, her senses hazy. Is this a dream?

There’s a presence radiating light, everywhere in her awareness. Her master?

The thought barely takes shape before it slowly dissolves into emptiness and she freezes in a flood of memories.

“Like last time.” It’s the Jedi's voice. He's in front of her, off to the side. “Breathe. Go slowly.”

Mara does but can barely take it. A second try is better, but tears sting her eyes, the feeling of loss wrenching as they drip down her face. After a long moment it ebbs into a hard pang. Her head’s bowed, eyes on the wooden panels under her feet. She’s not wearing any shoes or socks and the wood is smooth and warm under the bare soles of her feet.

Right, he’d wanted her to go outside, Mara remembers blankly.

She wonders if the Jedi mindtricked her into walking out or if he carried her -- maybe unconscious, over his shoulder like a bag of supplies. Like last time. She remembers that, as she remembers running into the trees with a desperation that seems like someone else’s. 

Mara wipes her eyes clumsily and sniffs. A few beats later she straightens up slightly. The Jedi moves from her peripheral vision into her line of sight. She turns her face, scanning that shadow was the airspeeders. When she drops her gaze by the steps, she notices a small bowl beside her. Probably full of the same gruel, broth, or whatever else she's not going to eat. 

She can’t remember the last time she ate. She doesn’t remember the last time she’s wanted to. Mara puts her hands next to her hips, gripping the step she’s sitting on. The wood under her hands feels as smooth as the one under her feet. 

What a waste of resources she’d ended up being.

Her master has probably found and executed that traitor already. The Empire _will_ continue without her. Be stronger without her. 

He doesn't need another stone.

The Jedi says, “You’re hurt and need to heal. It’ll get better.” 

She doesn't look up at him. Instead she scrutinizes the bowl beside her. Mindtricks.

“Hate me all you want, just let yourself get better.”

She moves her hand behind the the bowl. A flick of her hand and it goes tumbling down the veranda steps, hits the edge of the final step, rolls in the dirt at the foot of the stairs.

Only a few drops spill. All that had been left.

Mara closes her eyes and drops her head into her hands.





	11. Chapter 11

##### X. Faceting

  


  


* * *

4.35

A breakthrough. The crystal needs to be faceted in a specific way. 

  * minimize diffraction
  * containment devices direct energy pulse to collimating beam
  * realignment of lattices



* * *

~~~~

  


  


A muddled stretch of time after the veranda, the Jedi has them switch rooms, droning on and on about how his room is sunnier. Mara doesn’t care enough to oppose the idea. He has her stay sitting at the table right before breakfast, watching silently as the he goes and switches the pillows and sheets. He moves a box of -- tools? She can’t really tell. It seems heavy so that's what it has to be. To the room she'd slept in it goes, and to his room goes her clothing, and his to the one where she slept.

“Come see.” The Jedi waves her over after he’s done, a hopeful note in his voice. She’s uninterested in moving, is only out here because he wouldn't stop nagging her about breakfast. He'd said he'd leave her alone if she finished her meal.

They both know that's not going to happen, but at least if she has a little he'll shut up for a bit.

“I didn’t mean it to be a cell. You’ve spent too long in it. The change’ll be good. This side of the cabin gets more light, and the room has its own attached 'fresher unit.” He goes to the kitchen to check on what he put on. “Oh, it's done," he announces. "Normal food has to be better than those nutritive drinks people used to drink on ships, at least. You can see why spacers turned to ration bars and mealpacks.”

On and on he goes, until it all fades into a buzz in the background. Mara loses time, not thinking of anything in particular until he’s near her with a bowl.

She doesn't look at it. Any inclination to swallow anything down is abruptly gone.

“I know you don't want to,” he says evenly. “But you have to eat. You said you would.”

She shakes her head slowly. She did no such thing. He can just keep yammering.

He stops, an edge coming to his voice. “I can't let you go hungry. You had two sips of dinner last night. That's not enough.” Worry crosses his features. “If you don’t eat I’ll have to get you an IV line, and to do that I’m going to have to restrain you.”

She looks away. Just the idea makes her stiffen. He hasn’t used cuffs on her since _then_ , but it’s not the cuffs that make her start sweating, it’s the memory of being unable to move despite wanting to, her limbs not answering...

Sometimes she has nightmares about it.

“You don’t have to finish the bowl,” he goes on, gentling his tone. "Just a few sips.”

There it starts sounding like it'll take more effort not to comply, and this is a good day, so she takes the bowl and brings it to her lips. It’s thick -- all the soups, and gruel are, but that's all she notices. One sip. Two sips. Three sips. Four. She hands it back.

He takes it with a somber expression and goes back into the kitchen, and he does shut up for a while. She loses time again until the Jedi approaches her again.

“Let’s go outside.”

She has no quarter to say no to that one. He tends to the garden plot out back and no longer leaves her alone to do so. She thinks back to the veranda, that feeling of dreaming. That’s what he’d do, and she’d end up sitting there outside, none the wiser about how she got there. It's happened several times, mostly when she goes for too long without getting up from bed.

But today is a good day. Mara lurches up, and follows him out with plodding feet. He stops her at the doorway, and tilts his head beside the door. 

“Your shoes.”

She hasn’t worn her boots in a while; he's provided enclosed slippers she now slides her feet into before trudging behind him to the back, taking her usual spot in the back veranda steps. She’d gone barefoot for a while, used to sit on a blanket the Jedi brought, over by some of the trees on the side, but something crawled up and stung the side of her foot. She forgets what it'd been, a kind of ant or centipede.

Mara remembers when it started crawling over to her. Maybe it'd been a snake. It approached slowly. She hadn’t moved, only stared numbly at the shiny black of its -- chitin? scales? -- as it crept close and closer, as it slid over her toes, slightly prickly. She'd been thinking of the bug on her arm, the beetle she'd squashed in those first days. That one had been fatter. It'd made a wet crunching sound when she killed it.

A sudden sting had made her cry out in surprise, and the Jedi had turned, eyes widening as he rushed over to her, seeing the thing slither away and down the side of the blanket. He'd crouched before her, speaking a mile a minute, pressing her for details on what it had been though he had to know she wouldn't answer, tone half alarmed, very anxious as he looked over her foot, but there’d been enough haze in her head that made it all just noise. 

Her foot had swelled up that night, turned slightly purple, and hurt, the Jedi had given her some higher concentration bacta for it, but she hadn’t cared to put the ointment on, and he’d done it for her. She’d limped for a bit, but she never went too far, and certainly no longer without the Jedi, so it'd been only a minor inconvenience. It had lasted a few days. The Jedi now insists she wear shoes and sit on the veranda steps.

Just like always, he talks and talks and talks as he gets his gloves and tools, about hydroponic gardens, water measures, and sun and shade patterns until that too becomes a buzz like the whine of insects. It’s a simple patch, maybe a little bigger than the kitchen, a sunny area distant from the cluster of trees. She’s not familiar with all he grows, leafy purple vegetables, yellow root vegetables in the southern part; the northern side has the taller fruit plants, various varieties, though she's not sure. He planted a while back, so he's mainly doing upkeep, adding fertilizer to the plants that need it, removing weeds, and checking on pests. Between the vegetables he's added some bushy violet flowers --companion plants, he's said, there to kill harmful bacteria in the soil and repel some gray flies from the fruit plants in the back. The purpose suits the sloppy blossom; it's a pathetic thing, nothing like the flowers in shining Gardens--

She stops the thought. She’s not allowing herself to think of that.

Mara looks at the ground a few feet away from the veranda's steps. If she looks closely the dirt itself appears to be moving. The bugs. It gives her that not-quite itchy feeling.

The Jedi goes for the containers beside the steps and checks on her as he does, wiping the sweat on his brow with his sleeve. 

He looks off to the plot. “I'll have to move the ceae to where it gets more shade in the afternoon. I'm thinking maybe over there by the satei? What do you think?" he asks. “They're not doing that badly. They just have parts with white gashes -- probably too much direct sun, but most should still usable,” he muses, a hand on the container. “It's not as difficult as I thought. I thought with the rains there’d be more to keep track of, but I guess the weather's been good. I remember my aunt having tables and charts of everything, sitting down and puzzling over changes at night.” He turned back to the plot, squinting against the sun blaring down. “But I guess her plot was bigger. She _was_ feeding me and my uncle, and keeping things working smoothly in a sublevel plot -- growing vaults, we called them -- is more complicated.”

He moves back to the plot, picking the vegetables and fruits, putting them into the containers, still talking about sublevel plots. 

Mara looks to the darkened trees. 

The Jedi’s beside her again. “We can walk to the stream if you feel up to it. Remember the stream?”

She blinks. Not really.

"The one from last time?" He gestures for her to stand, holding the container under his arm. “It’ll be nice. Let’s go.”

She takes the water bottle the Jedi offers her after she stands, tips back her head for a sip while he dashes in the cabin to leave the container and comes back for her. 

“The stream might have grown since last time, but we’re still early on in the season so it should still be relatively small.” The opening between two tree narrows so only one person can fit. He gestures her ahead. “I’ve always liked it. Reminds me of the treehouse holos I saw as a kid back home. The ones of Ithor’s jungle, supposedly.” 

Mara ducks her head from an overhanging branch, focuses on her footing among the crisscrossing roots. She feels a slight ripple of power and catches a liana lift itself to keep it's thorns from spearing through her hair. She turns her attention back to her footing. 

“Of course, when I finally saw it -- the Ithorian jungle, they call it the Mother Jungle -- the houses there were completely different. Not _in_ the jungle for one which is holy ground to them. No one is allowed there. And they--they weren't even houses, not like I imagined them. All the structures were more like...floating rock formations.” 

Mara steps over two crisscrossing roots as thick as her thigh. She stops, not knowing where to head to next, but the Jedi steps beside her hardly a second later, and moves further towards a clump of blue ferns, leaves as big as her torso.

“Very impressive.” Her foot slides a little in the muck, but she balances out with effort. The Jedi has paused, his arm half flexing in her direction, suspended for a split second as he assesses her progress before he keeps walking. “Only in a different way -- in a way I hadn’t imagined. It could be that I embellished a little in my head, looking at those holobooks. They could have been a --a jumping off point for me to imagine something else, and Ithor wasn't that."

He goes on after a beat. “It could have been home too. I don’t know if anyone putting together those holobooks had been to Ithor either, or just heard about it. Back home a lot of us just wanted to get out, see something different. I'm not sure anyone cared whether those holos were real or not as long as they weren't...home.”

There's some undergrowth in this part. The tick grasses come to mind and she stops walking. 

“Most didn't get out." The Jedi stops too. "Imagining how different things could be elsewhere was the only way."

He walks a few paces ahead and looks back to her. Mara resumes walking.

Abruptly the trees are gone. There is only that clear stream, unruly vegetation stretching beyond, a tumultous sea of green, arched trunks like bridges surfacing from among it, and ducking back down. 

Gazing at the clear water, Mara _does_ remember, but abstractly. The memory of her last time here is wrapped up in a swirl of terror and rage that feels like something outside of her. As she walks closer, it’s the same numbness. She wonders if she came here not because it's a good day, but out of seeing if she could feel something, anything, but that blanket of nothing, that gaping emptiness within her.

She looks at the rocks of various sizes along the embankment, leans down and picks one small enough to fit in her palm. It's of a light brown color with misshapen, swollen edges. 

“A lot of the rocks along rivers are granite. The shiny black ones are basalt. There’s a third one I can’t remember. What do you have there?” She closes her fist. “River rocks tend to be smooth due to the water; water pushes other debris and parts of rocks and those break off, pieces, and those flow down and weather more. Jagged rocks are more likely to--”

Mara flings her arm out, tossing the rock. It doesn’t make a sound as it disappears from view. She's too far. probably.

The Jedi is looking at her. She feels the press of him in her mind, and then it’s gone. Used to it by now, Mara crouches looking around for another rock.

“--more likely to fall to the bottom.”

Mara finds the next and straightens up, approaches the stream, feels the Jedi’s eyes on her as she flings her arm out in another throw. She's close enough to to hear the _thunk_ as it hits the water and sinks. 

“Schist,” he blurts out. “That was the third one. Looks a little silvery, gray. Rectagular.”

Mara crouches down to get another, stands and tosses it. He continues rambling about rocks as Mara looks for more to toss, and it goes on like that until the light glints less on the stream’s surface. 

“We should go back,” the Jedi says, raising his head. “It’s getting cloudy. I don’t want us to get caught in the rain.”

She tosses the last rock and walks ahead of him back to the cabin.

* * *

Going to the stream becomes part of the routine. Mara likes spending her time picking the right stone to make skip across the surface. If it's the right stone and she throws it at the right angle, it can skip more than two times before it sinks.

Rainy season has started in earnest so the walks to the stream happen in the mornings after he’s done with the plot. They return, and he nags her for lunch. She often skips it. He nags her for dinner when that comes. Sometimes she can't have any. Sometimes she has a few sips.

Most of the time she still spends in the room, the heaviness of the fog over her. 

The bed in this new room isn't next to the window like hers had been, but in the center. The furniture is the same as the old room though, down to the armoire, but through the windows, she can see the scorch marks on this section of the veranda. They transfix her, and if she’s not lying down on the bed, she’s standing and staring at them through the glass.

The Jedi has come in to find her like that, looking out through the window, and she gets the sense he doesn’t like it, but he hasn’t said anything. Mara doesn't know how she knows.

She's caught herself walking into the other room as if she slept in it, using the other 'fresher as if it's hers despite the attached 'fresher in the new room. She feels the flicker of the Jedi's vigilance when she does, can't find a reason for it. The mirror is gone.

The Jedi's monologues wrap around during the days. When he can’t harass her into coming out to the dining area, he’ll bring his and her meals into the room, nag at her to take a few sips of hers. He'll sit crosslegged on the floor in a corner with his plate, and go on and on about something that happened to him back in his nowhere dustball, or about something that happened to someone he knew, or another mundane topic. He needs no excuse to chatter on and on. If lunch isn't too involved, he’ll even follow her back to the room after they’ve returned from the stream to keep filling the air with words. From time to time bewilderment glimmers through her numbness that so many words could live in a person. She'd been taught to--

She stops the thought. She’s not allowed to think about that.

It’s during one of those times in the effort to distract herself that the lowlevel buzzing of the Jedi organizes itself into a statement, a slightly nasal intonation to it that lets her know he’s nagging her before she catches on for what exactly.

“-- draw you a bath, it’ll be easy.”

He rarely asks her directly to do anything. It's always couched in a statement. She shakes her head anyway.

“You’ve gone without one for too long,” he says, frowning. “It’s not good.”

He might have mentioned it before, but he’s spent most of his time pestering her about eating. It's easy to forget. In any case, there’s no point to that either. 

“And your hair needs to be washed.” She stays where she is, and he adds, “I need to change the sheets anyway.”

He’s religious about that. Mara remembers him threatening to carry her to the sofa if she refused to move. She sits up slowly, and pushes herself off the bed. 

“And since you’re already up...” He tilts his head towards the door to the 'fresher. Just like that, he’s grabbing a new set of clothes and pulling her into the 'fresher. He leaves her clothes beside the sink and goes to sit on the tub's rim while she stands a few steps behind him. The water is loud as it pours down the spout. 

He’s taken the mirror from the cabinet like he'd done in the other 'fresher, she notices. But this isn't first time she's used this 'fresher, is it? Surely, she must have noticed before. Even without the mirror, the last image of herself makes her want to claw out her own throat.

But that's just an impulse, she thinks, staring at the dark material above the sink where the mirror used to be. She can't summon that kind of energy anymore. Not even on a good day.

From the corner of her eye she sees the Jedi’s eyes set on her, a drawn expression on his face. 

It's begun to make sense to her why he'd stopped her from killing herself. 

If she's dead he can no longer project his dead girl on her. 

Water sloshes out from the tub's rim and to the ‘fresher floor.

The Jedi startles. He quickly turns back to it and closes the faucet, but after, he freezes, looking at the small puddle of water beside the tub. He sucks in a breath a second later, and reaches to pull at the stopper to lower the water level, letting out a forced laugh. “I should have been paying more attention. These bathtubs fill much quicker than I expect. With all this rain people don’t worry about controlling water pressure. My uncle would make it so that if there was someone -- say my aunt using the kitchen sink -- the water in the shower would barely be a trickle. It was irritating, but we were used to it to conserve as much as we could. This is different -- the tank here is always full. I bet I could turn on all the faucets and the showers here and the one from the guest 'fresher and it'd make no dent on the water pressure.” He stands, and stays there with an air of awkwardness. 

“You’ll be okay?” It’s not a question at all. He’s speaking to himself, she knows.

He leaves, closing the door behind him. For a long time Mara's eyes rest on the smooth layer of water on the tub. Slowly, she undresses and slides one foot in and then the other. The water is scalding hot, but she doesn’t mind. She doesn't bother to close the shower curtain. Once she’s sitting, her head falls forward, forehead against the water spout and closes her eyes. Disappears.

There’s a knock at her door. And another.

“Mara?”

She stays where she is and hears the door open.

“The temperature okay? Not too hot?”

After a long moment of silence, the door closes again.

Mara stays in the tub until the light outside turns dark and the skin on her fingertips prune, until the water is past lukewarm into cool. She doesn’t sleep. It's the same when she's in bed. She could stay like this forever, and when she wakes that same exhaustion will be there, that same fog of nothingness clouding everything. 

Two knocks in quick succession.

“Mara?”

She doesn’t answer and the door opens. 

“You okay? The water must be cold by now. You should come out. And your hair... Why don’t you get out and dress -- we can just wash it at the sink.”

The door closes.

Yes, she thinks, her head against the water spout. That’s suitable. If he’s going to push so much he might as well wash her hair at the sink as if it were a rag. She puts her hand on the rim and stands. It goes from cool to cold in an instant, but that’s fine.

Two knocks in quick succession.

The door opens with a “Mara?” Then he makes a small surprised sound. “What are you doing standing there?” The words tumble out in reproach as he approaches, an undercurrent of anxiety under them, bright, as he sweeps the towel under her arms, tucking the end tightly around her. He watches her feet hawkishly as she climbs out, his hand tense and half stretched as if he’s narrowly restraining grabbing her and yanking her out. 

“Your feet are still in the water. How long have you been standing there like that? You’re shivering. Here.” He passes her the sleep tunic and when she won't take it quickly enough, tugs it down past her head and over the towel. “Finish getting dressed so we can wash your hair.”

He leaves, shutting the door. Mara pulls out the towel and leaves it on the floor while she gets the underwear on. She’s just sliding one pant leg on when there’s two knocks and the usual “Mara?” The door opens.

“Oh -- you’re not -- I can just --“ 

She doesn’t look up as she finishes sliding up the other pant leg and straightens up.

“Oh, you’re done. Okay.” He gestures to the sink. “Let’s get started on your hair.”

* * *

Time continues its slide forward much in the same way. As usual, there are days when the cloud is slightly less. She can stomach more, feels less lightheaded, and up to walking to the stream. She gets over the exhaustion enough to bathe and cooperate with having her hair washed, dried, braided and pinned up. So it's out of her eyes, he's said. At the end of those days she doesn’t quite feel like a person, but maybe a ghost, a shadow.

The others are bad days. In those, she can’t get up at all no matter how much the Jedi nags and cajoles, and threatens the restraints. She might as well be a breathing corpse.

If that state goes for some time, the Jedi intervenes. Mara's not exactly sure when, time is not all that clear even on good days. The details grow even hazier on bad days. After, she’ll wake up refreshed, new tunic and everything, with the impression that she’s been dreaming. 

It's awful because she knows it wasn't-- because in addition to what he'd had her do or what he'd done to her, whatever’s broken found itself soothed. But _he’s_ the one who broke it in the first place. The knowledge ties her in knots and if she keeps going she’ll end up right where she started, stuck in bed wanting to die until the Jedi forces fake peace into her.

Gradually, she’s learned to focus on the fact that she’s no longer suffocating when she wakes up, if anything to avoid cycling through it again immediately after. That's how it went the first few times.

She'd almost rather the pain of getting her head torn open again.

The Jedi's never actually restrained her since _then_ though remains a threat if she refuses to eat, or bathe, or subject herself to hair washing -- usually it's all three, really. But she's rarely alone for any substantial period. The only time is in the 'fresher, and even there, the Jedi regularly interrupts her baths with some excuse, gaze averted, voice thin and anxious. 

She'd say the nights, maybe are the longest period she spends by herself, but he's there too. Mara suspects he doesn't sleep all that long anyway, if at all. All night she feels him in and out of the room, discerns his outline by the perpetually open door at the threshold to the room, faintly gray from the wan illumination through the window.

It could be he's not in and out of the room, the thought has occurred to her, he's in and out of her _mind_. It can get hard to tell when she's tired or deep in the fog. Her head's a murky space, unknowable to her now, a no man's land. One image recurs in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness these days:

The bed she's in, only it's empty, she's not in it, the sheets in disarray. Sometimes if she's closer to awake, she realizes it's not even her bed at all, but _another_ bed, immaculately made, sterile, as if it's from a hotel or medcenter though not quite either. 

A desolate, near desperate feeling wells up, her eyes filling up with tears. Something lost, something taken. Just as it comes, it goes. 

If there's no cuffs, she tries to distract herself from the image, unsettling in ways she can't put a finger on, then does that mean the lock for the front door is no longer enabled? In the dark of the room, she imagines herself leaving the cabin. The forest floor shines under her feet. _Crunch crunch crunch_.

There’d be nowhere to go.

She closes her eyes. It’s beyond her now to vanish into the jungle, hoping it takes her, and it just might not. Maybe she'll be condemned to wander lost forever, a living dead thing, not running, trudging through the shadowy spaces between trees without a destination.

Her traitorous head can do worse, bringing her memories of dazzling floors of silverstone, alabaster statues, a sumptuous throne, as if it doesn’t understand that the dead have no memories. 

She can hear the _clap-clap_ of her boots as she approaches the throne. And, her mind, even in its pathetic wrecked state presents her with the unrefutable.

Her master never praises her for her bravery when she kneels before him.

He looks at her coldly instead. Colder than anything she’s felt. Cold enough to make her wither.

“What did you let him do to your gift?” he asks.


	12. Chapter 12

  


##### XI. Flux

  


* * *

3.26

~~A Jedi commentator in the datacrons said the kyber is easily insulted. A Jedi should take care.~~  


* * *

~~~~

  


  


Mara rubs the pad of her finger against the smooth stone. It’s of an oblong shape, heavy in her palm. She throws her arm forward, tossing it. Two skips.

“I thought we'd get a chance to go to Nialin for supplies earlier,” the Jedi says from where he sits beside her, gazing out to the stream. “Much earlier. We need supplies. It’s probably a good idea to go sooner rather than later.” He pauses and turns to her. “Might be good for you to see it.”

She throws another stone across the stream. One skip.

Carefully, he says, "I’d like you to go with me.”

Mara throws another stone. One skip.

That’s the request-that-isn’t-a-request tone. He doesn’t like using it, she knows. If she ignores it for long enough, it'll be followed by a threat, which she's learned he hates making even more.

Mara hefts the stone. That's probably why she's been so uncooperative these days. She forces the threat _because_ he hates it. The thought of being restrained makes her stomach clench, but she's certain now he won't go through with it, and he knows more likely than not she'll relent once he makes it.

She lets the stone go. Two skips. Better. She picks up another.

She tosses it. One skip.

When she's truly intractable, he just goes into her mind instead. She wakes up showered, fed, well rested, feeling like the person she isn't until he brings down the link.

And then she remembers how much she hates herself. Hates herself _more_.

“Asher Sunwhite,” she singsongs his fake name softly as she searches for another stone. “Asher Sunwhite.”

He flinches and looks away. He hates when she does that too; she'd started not that long ago.

“Asher Sunwhite, Asher Sunwhite, Asher Sunwhite,” she babbles like it's nonsense because it is. She laughs, a sound like scraping glass, picks out her next stone.

She’s not mad, at least not as mad as she sounds, though she wishes she were. She does it to see him recoil, but takes care not to push it. Too much of this gets the opposite reaction and he’ll be in her head, projecting urgent concern she'll hurt herself.

The first time she'd babbled she'd done it during one breakfast when she hadn't wanted to eat, and he'd kept asking her to, over and over, growing more insistent. It was around when the Jedi had first moved her to his room, weeks ago? Months? He'd threatened the cuffs. She'd slapped the bowl off her bedside table, sending its contents all over the room, and parroted his fake name the way he'd been parroting hers.

_Asher Sunwhite. Who are you? Asher Sunwhite. Who are you? Asher Sunwhite. Who are you?_

She hadn't stopped babbling. Not after he'd cleaned up the mess. Not when he left. Not even when he'd come back with water, or with the next meal, hours later.

_Who are you? Asher Sunwhite. Who are you? Asher Sunwhite. Who are you? Asher Sunwhite. Whoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyou_

The Jedi had grown more and more agitated the longer the repetition went.

_ashersunwhiteashersunwhiteashersunwhiteashersunwhiteashersunwhiteashersunwhite_

The shakier his voice had gotten, the more she'd heard him pacing up and down outside her room, the less able she'd been to stop babbling.

_whoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyou_

Eventually he'd come into her room, into her mind, wiped her out, as usual, no threat, no warning. He'd taken the link down when she'd woken.

But this time the fog had _immediately_ pushed her under like it hadn't in a while, thick and cloying, intolerable, the moment the link faded. It'd been unavoidable to try to escape it, even with the little energy she had, even with him in the room.

She'd gone to crack her head against the wall. The Jedi had grabbed her. She'd flailed, a vain attempt at struggling, before sagging in his hold, exhausted, suffocating in the fog.

She might have been babbling all the while, unable to stop.

The Jedi hadn't left her on the bed or wiped her out again the way he'd used to when he'd first started. He'd half-carried her here, to the stream. She recalls it in pieces, her feet slightly dragging on the dirt, an arm around her back, and being anchored solidly as she'd been pulled along.

She'd been babbling even then, but no longer struggling.

Once here, the fog had gotten less oppressive. She'd fallen silent, disappeared for a bit, hugging her knees to her chest, staring at the stream. When she was more aware, she registered the Jedi beside her talking about parts -- vaporizers? vaporers? parts-- in a husky, slightly dissonant voice. 

A stretch of time later, she'd reached for a nearby rock -- there'd been a neat pile of them beside her-- flicked her hand for a throw, then another, and another. At some point she realized it'd been raining, the ground around her darker and wet, the Jedi's hair and tunic too. He'd stopped talking and his eyes had been closed. When she'd looked down she and the immediate area she'd been sitting in was dry. To her addled brain, it'd just been a fact, and she'd stayed where she was until the Jedi had exhaled. He'd cleared his throat not long after, and said they should get back. She'd stood and gone with him. At the cabin, she'd had several sips of her soup and fallen in bed as if it were any other day, slept without waking once. No dreams that night.

He'd let her babble since then. He hates it, she knows. That's why she does it, she thinks. It's why she still does it.

She hasn't babbled for that long again. Not like that.

Mara throws the stone. One skip.

“We'll get a belt for those pants," he says, self deprecating like it's his sash, his pants. "Better than a sash. Or you can get some new clothing."

She chuckles and gets another stone. “Asher Sunwhite'll get me a belt. Take me shopping."

He doesn't answer the question, sounds just a little wary when he says, “We'll go shopping.”

“We'll go shopping," she singsongs, throws the stone. 

Two skips.

“It won’t be today.” He rubs at his forehead. 

She picks out her next rock.

“End of the week probably -- in the afternoon, hopefully it won't come down that hard before evening. I just wanted to give you the head’s up. We can wait a little longer if you don't feel up to it.”

She tosses the stone. When doesn’t matter.

One skip.

* * *

They must be at the peak of the rainy season. She’s not sure exactly how much time has passed but enough that her braid is past regulation length. It takes forever to wash at the sink and towel dry. The Jedi washes her hair twice a week like clockwork unless she's uncooperative in which case he'll let her go for a fixed number of days. Eventually, the cuffs come up and she cooperates.

These days she's reminded she'd be allowed to keep her hair as long as she wanted after her eighteenth name day. Her heart wrenches inside her and she regrets the thought immediately. She doesn’t allow herself those memories.

She doesn’t mind the rainy season though. She sits in front of the huge living room windows just staring past the veranda at the rain falling outside, the distant rumble of thunder in the late afternoon and nights, the occasional bright flicker of lightning. It feels like being at the stream, kind of.

The Jedi sits beside her from time to time, eyes closed, quiet. Despite being uncooperative, she's feeling up to a little more these days, even picked up the datapad the Jedi's left her. He must have put his battery inside the one he'd given her, a dumb thing to do considering she doesn't use it all that much. She's looked through holodocs on flora and fauna, but can't read, her brain too sluggish from disuse. Maybe she forgot how. 

“Today is good,” the Jedi says after his usual breakfast nagging a few days later. He's in a good mood because she finished half her eggs. “Let’s go to Nialin this afternoon.”

Must as she tries to ignore the feeling, the momentousness seeps into her. In spite of herself she wonders what it would be like to stay behind cuffed to the chair alone in silence. Even when the Jedi's not in the same room filling the air between them with useless words, she always feels him at the horizon of her awareness, closer when she’s sinking.

How long has that been happening? She doesn't know. There's more that she's forgotten, but that's okay. There’s a lot memories she doesn’t care to have anyway.

* * *

It’s an half an hour flight into Nialin. They go in the airspeeder the Jedi keeps at the cleared area at front of the cabin past the veranda. The clunky thing is apparently higher flying than a usual speeder. _Tropospheric craft_ , her mind supplies out of nowhere. When the repulsorlifts starts Mara's stomach tightens, a gasp loosened from her throat at the feeling of plunging, the smell of acrid smoke, and cold earth beneath her hands.

The Jedi's head snaps towards her with a sharp "What is it?" his presence pouring into her mind. 

She continues strapping herself in with clumsy hands, pushing the memories aside. He's also gone from her mind, apparently having decided whatever it is doesn't require him abstracting her self away. The repulsors start up and he rambles about the production history of T-26s.

As he blathers, Mara goes through her memory for the capital’s name. Myrra. It's funny she remembers that when she can't recall what they're going to Nialin for even though the Jedi had just told her. She can't handle all the distant green through the canopy and closes her eyes.

They won’t be going to Myrra any time soon. Akiva is under Imperial control, but that would mean all the resources are concentrated in the capital. The Jedi would never take her anywhere close to it. He's as risk averse as they come. 

Mara's first view of Nialin is landing pad after they touch down, a large square space haphazardly hacked into the tall grasses. A couple of Duros workers come to meet them. The Jedi exchanges greetings with them, lets them know how long he plans to leave the speeder there and haggles over the price. After, he gestures with a tip of his head to the path out, telling her, "It's a bit of a walk, but you've never been here. You might find it interesting." 

Interesting is not how she would describe the dirt path they take.

"Nialin's a settlement," the Jedi says as they walk. "Small, a cluster of homesteads, really. We're heading to the...main business district, I guess you could call it." 

It starts drizzling a little, and the Jedi offers her a canopy from his shoulder bag, but it’s hot enough that she doesn’t mind it. He doesn't either and slides it back in. Not long after, they come up to a wide thoroughfare. Pedestrian traffic has thickened which makes it a little trickier to maneuver, but more than that a strange buzz of excitement makes the air almost vibrate. Mara feels it loud in her head. Unpleasant. She finds herself looking over at the Jedi by her side.

“I feel it too,” he mutters. His apprehension deepens and she catches him scanning around as they step between mixed groups of beings of various species, Rodians, Koorivars, Ithorians, and few humans, assembled in the edges of the wide path in front and between squarish structures, all made of local wood by the look of it, not that different from the cabin's make. Most beings are dressed in thin casual tunics of earth colors, no flightsuit or uniform in sight. Their eyes pass over her and the Jedi, but don't stop. Mara supposes there's enough hodgepodge here that they wouldn't attract much notice, and she thinks maybe she could get a better feel if it weren't for the _noise_. The Jedi gestures to what appears to be a warehouse, interrupting her scrutiny. "That's the general store. We won't stay long." 

She catches snippets of conversation from random passerby as the Jedi scans around, waiting for her to walk forward. 

“...an act of terrorism.”

“Who would dare...”

“I don’t think it’s true...”

The space inside the warehouse is divided into areas with materials from construction supplies, to droids and appliances, at the far end she thinks she sees comestibles. A few beings wander about the spacious aisles. Mara lags behind the Jedi, still with that loud buzzing in her head. A Rodian approaches as Jedi walks through the hardware aisles, and greets, “Oh, Sunwhite, is it? Been a while.”

She stiffens. The Jedi couldn't have been here in months, how could they remember him? But there’s no spike of unease in the Jedi, only faint surprise as he turns around. “You remember me?”

The Rodian’s snout twitches. “Never forget a face. The Otteil place is something, eh? Can't blame you for not leaving. Thought for sure someone from Myrra looking for a vacation home would snatch it up.”

The Jedi gives him a polite smile. “It is comfortable.There's just been a little more upkeep to do than I'd like. It'd be more convenient closer to town.”

The Rodian’s head turns in her direction. "Ah, yes." He makes a sound Mara dimly interprets as a laugh. "Young people don't appreciate peace and quiet much -- like to run in packs. This the family member you were helping with a move? To Myrra?” 

This time the Jedi's smile turns decidedly uneasy as his eyes flicker over to her, but Mara is more concerned with the noise in her head. It's calling up an impulse to move, go somewhere, doesn't matter where. "Plans tend to change."

The Rodian's snout twitches again. "That they do."

The Jedi reaches a light hand to her shoulder. She feels him seep into her head. The noise dies down and she feels her frown deepen. “My cousin Mara.” He turns to her and the air turns strangely awkward as he says, “Do you want to...,” he gestures around the store, “look at anything specifically? Maybe clothes?”

The Rodian takes in the exchange with an expression Mara can’t read, and says, “Mivre has a clothing store across the street a couple of blocks down. If she wants to look more...youthful.”

She thinks the Jedi might decline, but he only says, “Not a bad idea.” He slides credits into her hand, tension in him so stark she's surprised the Rodian doesn't feel it. “It might take a bit to get everything and load it up. Just go ahead.”

Mara looks at the credits in her hand numbly. When she lifts her head in inquiry the Jedi is asking the Rodian about deliveries, but she senses him close in her mind. She closes her fist tighter around the credits.

With that same numbness, Mara inhales, turns on her heel, and exits the general store, walking across the wide dirt street, darting between various cargo animals, groups of cloaked beings, and muddy speeders down the blocks until she finds a store with two mannequins wearing implausibly colorful get ups as its window display. This should be it. The feeling of surreality gets keener once she walks into the store. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s been in one -- mostly as part of a mission. Her clothing was always provided for her. The memory comes with the usual stab. There’s nothing worse than remembering. Nothing.

She rifes through the dresses on the racks, without really seeing anything. What is she doing here?

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

Mara lifts her head. A human woman in her fifties, her dark hair is streaked with gray and pulled back into a ponytail, smiles at her. She’s wearing a long brown dress of a light fabric that seems standard for the human settlers in this area. The tone is kindly, if curious.

Mara shakes her head, makes her tone aloof to discourage conversation. Her voice sounds strange to her ears. It's been just that long since she's done anything other than babble. “No, just looking.”

"I have some teal dresses that would look nice on someone with your complexion," she offers.

Mara pretends to be interested in the tunics she's looking through.

“I haven't see you before,” the woman says after a long moment. "Myrra?"

Mara finds nothing to say to that either, though she knows she should say something.

Finally, the woman departs. Mara raises her eyes. She'd gone to the front. This must be her store then. Mara gets the impression the Rodian had mentioned her by name but it escapes her. Mara goes back to the tunics. Nothing draws her attention. Why is she even here? the question rises up again. She's got clothes.

She looks down. She's wearing the clothing the Jedi packed for her. She’s never considered that fact since _before_. Accepted it. Clothing had been provided for her, just as it continues to be so now. One aspect in which the rungs of her life haven’t been upended.

Today she's dressed in a simple navy blue tunic shirt and tan trousers. They’re large for her. They always were, but they’re much more so now -- all the clothing is. The Jedi has given her some fabric. She'd turned it into a sash, tied it as a makeshift belt to make the trousers fit around her waist.

A belt. That's one of the things they were going to get.

He’d planned everything. She feels cold all of a sudden. To pin a dead woman’s shadow on her.

Were these _her_ clothes?

Mara turns around and exits the store. It’s stopped drizzling. Before she can cross the street to head back to the general store, a speeder truck full of stormtroopers pulls up in the block past the warehouse. The bystanders on the streets stop and stare.

Air in her lungs becomes short at the sight.

The Jedi walks out from the general store across the street, still in conversation with the Rodian. He looks at her before he catches the group of stormtroopers. For an instant there’s a stab of anxiety that she knows isn't hers at all. 

The stormtroopers don’t know who she is.

_The recognition code is Hapspir, Barrini, Corbolan, Triaxis._

She remembers every word, but hadn't remembered what the Jedi came here to get. He'd told her.

The Jedi calls to her casually with a wave of his hand, “Mara.” He’s turned to the storekeeper, angling his face away from the stormtroopers. He's close in her mind -- as close as he was when she'd left.

If she did identify herself, she'd wake up at the cabin and --

Nothing would change.

The stormtroopers. He'd kill them all. Tear them open inside out like he did her. _They_ would die.

Like she should have.

If he'd _let_ her.

She's dressed in a dead woman's clothes.

A voice speaks beside her with forced calm.

“It’s better to keep one’s distance if you know what I mean.” Mara turns her head. It’s the storekeeper of the clothing store, and she lays a hand on Mara’s forearm. Mara flinches, and the woman withdraws it, but whispers, “There’s rumors of Rebel activity -- a blown up base or space station. Something big elsewhere. They’re,” she points her chin towards the stormtroopers assembling, “probably just monitoring. They'll go up and down the street and leave.” 

“Blockade?” Mara asks from between dry lips.

The storekeeper laughs softly. “No, Nialin is a speck. All of it is a formality so that the Satraps can continue licking the boots of whatever Core bureaucrat is in charge, tell 'em they're vigilant. Even the rebels don’t recruit much from here. It's a show.”

“So they don’t stop anyone?” she whispers back. From across the street, the Jedi looks at her steadily.

_What did you let him do to your gift?_

“No. They just go up and down the street, watching sentients come and go. It’s still not a good idea to get too close or look at them real hard. You never know.”

“Mara,” the Jedi calls again. 

“I...” Her voice fails her as she looks at the storekeeper at a loss. 

The storekeeper’s expression turns concerned. “Are you alright?” 

Mara holds her breath while she nods. She wants to babble _I'm wearing a dead woman's clothes_. But that's crazy, and if she starts, she might not stop. She tries again. “I have to go. Thank you.” She clutches the credits in her hand as she crosses the street.

“That’s everything,” the Rodian is saying looking down to the datapad, “I’ll send the youths in a speeder with them.” He hands it back to the Jedi, who slips it back in his bag.

The Jedi gives his thanks while stormtroopers keep moving the opposite direction. He turns and gestures Mara back to the path to the landing pad, and they both walk back in tense silence. Mara expects the rolling feeling within her to ease up the further they are, but it doesn't. It's not the noise, that's still gone. It's gone because of him. Mara keeps her gaze down at her boots. But it's not really gone, she thinks. It's a sham, a trick. She should have done something, the knowledge curdles inside her.

She doesn't know what.

They reach the landing pad then. The Rodian was right and there’s a speeder there with various boxes waiting when they get there, a Duros youth and another Rodian stand in front of it. The Jedi greets them and they work out where to load everything while Mara climbs into the speeder. She should have done something.

Mara grips the credits tightly, feeling heavy like a stone that won’t skip, only sink and she _wants_ to sink, wants to reach somewhere dark, quiet, and cold, but it's just that there’s no end to the sinking feeling, there’s no stopping, no bottom, only an eternal plunge down--

"Mara." The Jedi touches her shoulder. The sinking feeling eases a little.

She jerks away, wishing she could jerk her _mind_ away. She looks out the speeder’s window beside her, face close enough that her breathing fogs the glass. That's what it is. The sinking feeling is still there, just that there's thin glass between her and it. Like the noise. Because of the Jedi. It's fake and alien and _wrong_.

"I didn't know that they'd be here," he mutters as the repulsorlifts come on. "By the time I put two and two together, it was too late. I lost track of the dates. And that shouldn't matter. They shouldn't have been here. I didn't think _here_ of all places. It's not Myrra. They had no reason to be here. No reason at all."

Sounds like _he's_ the one saying nonsense, the ring of anxious apology that has surfaced in the words well worn by now. Like always, it changes nothing. He's still the lunatic dressing her in a dead woman's clothes. 

"It's too far. It's got no connection." It’s raining again, hard as they lift off, leaving Nialin behind. Mara leans her forehead against the glass and shuts her eyes. "They weren't there for anything involving us. We have nothing to do with them."

Mara closes her eyes willing him to just _shut up_. Thankfully, he does, but it seems as if in a blink they’re touching down again, and he can't help himself, "We would have never gone if I had known. I would have never exposed you to that. Never. Especially now. You're getting better--"

She exits, jumping out, leaving the coins behind. The Jedi scrambles out behind her. “Mara!“

"All this time you've been getting better," he calls out in the downpour. "I wish --" She doesn’t know the security access code, so she’s forced to stop and wait as the rain falls thickly down. "We shouldn't have gone. I know that. I just didn't know then. I couldn't have. We're too far. And Nialin -- Nialin's only a small settlement. There's no reason why they should have been there. Nialin has nothing to do with the war." His eyes are on her. "Nothing. They weren't looking for me or you. It's just...it's just the Satrap wanting to show loyalty. And they -- it wouldn't have helped. They wouldn't have helped you. They couldn't have. It would have been worse."

She focuses on how the rain drips down the sides of her face, how it soaks through her hair, her clothes. Of course it would have been worse. Because of him. He would have killed them. Because of her. Her thoughts keep circling. Because of him. Because of her. Dead woman clothes.

_What did you let him to do your gift?_

"It'll be okay," the Jedi says. "You'll be okay." She focuses on the code the Jedi distractedly inputs to avoid the intense way his eyes lock on her face. "It'll be okay, Mara. You'll be okay."

The Jedi gets the door open and she darts in. He’s calling her name, but she doesn’t pause as she goes to the room and rips the dead woman's clothes off. All of them. For a moment she stands there in the room, half expecting him to walk in behind her, the way he always has, but he doesn't. It's a relief for a while, but soon the silence in her head is too loud, the fog right there, and she finds herself crawling into her bed. No. It's wrong. Not hers. Smells wrong, like _him_ and with a cry she jumps up, clenching her jaw. 

She darts to one side. The other. Paces, paces, digs her hands into her hair with a low sound, ripping the pins out, ripping out the halo braid, clawing out the strands loose.

This thing in her. It is _nothing_.

It is _asphyxiating_ her.

She wants to slam her head against against the floor, tear at her throat, all to make that nothingness go away.

The Jedi is at the threshold, at the door -- and her mind -- while she paces, paces. It's buried deep behind the hollow her throat and it can't come out.

It has to. All this _nothing_ has to. Has to go somewhere. It has to go somewhere. Or there won't be any _her_ left.

He'll wipe her out.

Before she knows it she’s yanking hard at the sheets crumpling them up in her arms, going to the door and flinging them out with a wordless shout. From her peripheral vision, she sees the Jedi very still, now at a corner of the room. Closer. She turns her attention to the pillow, grabs that and flings it out too. Then she crawls into the mattress, curling into her side, towards the window, water seeping from her to it.

In a minute, he’ll be here and in her head, making her feel like she doesn’t. Making her forget that she’s dead to everything that ever had mattered. There _isn't_ any her. The Jedi will make it so there won't _be_ any her. Not for a while.

The problem is always waking up.

* * *

She's aware when the Jedi approaches and speaks, but it’s just noise. After that, soft material is placed over her, she jolts and the Jedi freezes. He holds a towel. He'd been laying it on her like blanket.

“You’ll catch something,” he explains as she eases her tensed muscles. “You should put on dry clothes.” He gestures to clothes at the foot of the mattress. Dead woman clothes, her mind supplies. He grabs another towel from her bedside table and tucks it gently around her head.

She should have done something. At Nialin. When she saw the stormtroopers.

Why didn’t she?

Why?

A sinking feeling. A traitorous sinking stone.

* * *

She loses time in that haze until he shows up with a meal.

“The good thing about going into the settlements, is getting fresh stuff. We can vary things a bit. Noodles are good hot or cold, so...” She hears him near bedside table, subtle tension in his voice. “Maybe you'll be more comfortable with your sleep tunic on.”

Why is she listening? Why can’t his voice fade into background noise?

“It can't be warm enough. At least a blanket," he chides. The next thing she knows he's laying another soft material over her, on top of the towel. A blanket this time. Her blanket. Like an animal, she recognizes it more by smell than sight.

Why can’t he leave?

It dawns on her with horror that _she’s never asked him to_. Even if it didn’t work, she’d never tried. She'd never so much as closed the door.

_What did you let him do to your gift?_

She shuts her eyes, curling her body tighter, a low moan muffled by her hands. 

“Mara.”

“Get out,” she whispers and then louder, until she can’t stop and she's babbling it out from behind her hands, screaming it out, “Get out. Get out Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.”


	13. Chapter 13

  


##### XII. Weapon

  


* * *

What have we done what have we  


* * *

~~~~

  


  


That night Mara can’t sleep; she tosses on the damp, sheetless mattress.

It's not the hunger though her stomach hurts. Her dinner is still at the bedside table long grown cold. The Jedi hadn't pressed her to eat, not lunch, nor dinner. Not tonight. He'd slunk back when she'd babbled, left the room, and only returned later when it was dark out and she'd fallen quiet. He'd replaced her uneaten lunch with her dinner, and slunk away wordlessly again.

Mara still feels him in her mind.

But she's not thinking about that. She’s thinking that she'd read about this. The thoughts buzz in her head like locusts. She'd been taught about this. 

All of her lessons had been useless.

Mara pushes the towel and blanket off, gets up, slides her feet to the floor.

There came a moment, if you did things right, if every element was in place, that you wouldn’t need a cage anymore. The cage became the prisoner’s own mind.

She plods down the darkened hall, wood of the floorboards creaking under her bare feet.

She'd been Mara Jade. She’d had purpose and promise, but no more. She's here at the enemy of her master’s whims. An empty shell. Worse.

A traitor.

It hadn't even been the first time.

A filthy fucking traitor.

The Jedi's in the living room, but she's not looking at him. She goes to the access panel.

He calls her name once, twice.

She...she can't remember the code. She knows she saw the Jedi input it earlier. She'd trained her eyes on it, saw his fingers move over the keys.

Mara can't remember it. She presses her forehead against the door, turning her head slightly

"Okay," the Jedi replies from somewhere behind her. "We can go out. Just let's get you some clothes and--"

"Now," she murmurs, closing her eyes. "Now now now now now now."

"It's past midnight and it's raining. You'll catch something. We'll go to the stream, but you need to put something on."

"Now." The material of the door is unyielding against her forehead. She imagines the beat of the rain; over time the door too would crumble like everything does. She extends a hand to the panel, tracing the grooves in the keys, slowly. "Now now now now now now now now."

"We'll go, just put something on."

She turns her head, eyes closed, splays her fingers, runs the pads of her fingers through the keys. The code is in her head, buried in the wreckage. Buried. Buried. Like her.

"Just put some clothing on, Mara."

In a dead woman's clothes. She's not putting them on. She glides her fingers over the grooves, the raised patterns, tracing them, imagines rain soaking her hair.

"You know what -- I'll go get them."

Rain soaking her clothes, dripping down her face --

An aurek, another. She doesn't even have to look at her hand. It moves over the key pad out of its own accord. 

Eight - five - nine.

The door opens with a hiss, and she's outside, dashing down the veranda steps, rushing though not quite running, mindless of her bare feet, the muddy ground, the rain coming down. He's right behind her, calling her name. She feels him near in her mind.

Eventually, he’ll stop her. Wipe her out.

He'd given her a dead woman's clothes and she'd worn them. He'd called her name and she'd come.

It begins to rain harder, but her steps don't falter. Her feet know the path well, even in the dark, know the crevices and passages by heart. She hears rushing water like a call. Louder and louder through the trees. Over a root, between two trunks...

The trees vanish. She's standing at the stream. The ground beneath her feet is wet, but smooth. One of the boulders overlooking the stream a few feet below. Under a sickly glimmer of moonlight through the clouds, she sees the stream, now transformed into a choppy, frothing river. 

A good stone can skip about two times before it sinks.

“Don't!” the Jedi screams out from behind her. The sharpness in his voice makes no sense. He could have stopped her before she even left the cabin. It'd be easy for him. He could have stopped her along the way. He could stop her now. "Get back!"

“No,” she whispers. Tries it again. Louder. "No."

"You're getting better. We wouldn't have gone to Nialin, if you weren't. You're better now. Step back. It's--it's not safe."

Say anything enough times and it stops meaning anything at all. 

"You're getting better. Tomorrow will be better. And the day after, even more. You must be cold."

Her face is wet, vision clouded and she wipes at it.

A pause and durasteel under his words “Mara, step away from the ledge.”

Something within her pushes through. A laugh. "Know how to swim?" She wants to say it over and over it but stops herself. It's in her head that it loops demonically _know how to swim know how to swimknowhowtoswim_. In her head it's just sounds.

“I do know. I learned when I joined the Alliance. I--I might not have told you that story.”

“We can drown.” Stops herself from repeating it again. It's babble, but only in her head. _We can drown we can drown wecandrownwecandrown._

“We won't.” He speaks softly but she hears him even with the pouring rain. “You won't.” 

Because the Jedi would stop her. Keep her here in this place, where she's half dead. It hurts to make sense. To put truths to words outside of her head. 

A filthy fucking traitor.

It's much better to babble.

“I would have never put you in the position you were today. Never knowingly. I want you to get better. I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that.”

"I'm not your dead girl." She discovers she can say that. "I'm not wearing her clothes."

"What?" It's true shock in the question. He repeats it, tone aghast. "What?"

"Your dead girl's clothes. The clothes you give me. I'm not wearing them."

"Your clothes." His voice is firmer there, almost angry. "Those are _your_ clothes." His tone softens. "They've always been your clothes. For you. No one wore them before you did. No one. Today was...upsetting, but it'll be better tomorrow. It will."

"I'm not your dead girl." She's repeating, but this doesn't feel like babbling. 

A few beats of silence pass.

"You're not. She's...gone. And you...you're...here."

"Why?" Mara doesn't even expect an answer. Maybe the old _to save her life_ he'd used over and over _then_. She scans around her feet, but sees no good stones to throw. The rain might have washed them away.

“I...I have a project," he surprises her by saying. There's a resigned undertone that grows heavier with each word. "That only you can help me with."

He's never mentioned such a thing. She would remember, wouldn't she? She would. 

The Jedi’s silent for a few beats. “I should have told you before. When I first found you." It sounds weirdly rehearsed to her. There's something odd about it, about him now she can't understand. "Akiva is known as a former Jedi training ground and holds a significant amount of kyber crystals. I’ll tell you more inside. It’s raining, Mara." Urgency returns to his voice. "Let's go back. You’ll catch a cold naked in the rain like that.”

A _project_?

“It'll take four years to complete. After that it's up to you," he continues when she doesn't move. “And I won’t leave you empty handed, you'll have whatever you need to make your own way wherever you decide to go. You have my word. I won't--I won't stop you. I'll be gone. Just step away from the ledge, Mara.”

Water rushes in when his words fade out.

She closes her eyes. Is that what it's been all along? Take her life away for a _project_? Four years?

It's too big. It's enormous.

“I won’t ask you anything about your former employ. Nothing. I don’t care about it."

Employ, as if she'd been a drudge. She can't even _think_ of all he'd taken. In those four years where would she be?

For a project.

"I've never cared. It's always been you, only you, and -- and what you offer. That's worth -- worth-- everything."

My life for the Empire.

He snatched her future from her hands, and all the training, all the lessons, all the praise meant nothing. She'd being unable to stop it. Her master hadn't saved her.

No one had. 

She covers her face with her hands. How dare she blame her master? How? It's _her_.

What a wretched, common thing she is.

"Mara, _please_." His voice cracks. "You'll get better. It won't always feel like this. You've been getting better. Let's go back."

Another betrayal, and there’s no bottom. No bottom at all.

My life.

"Mara, I -- I don't --"

“I can't go back." Just whispering the words out loud grants them an overpowering fatal reality. "I can't." She wants to babble them into senselessness, but she can't. They're the _only_ thing that makes sense now.

Rushing water beckons in the silence.

"Mara, you have no idea how...valuable you are to me. Please."

A project. And that dead girl -- a colleague? A fellow Jedi, now dead? 

An eye for an eye.

“This -- this job," he forces the word out like it's horrible, that strange sense about him intensifying, "is something _only_ you can do. Your...skillset is unique. Precious. More than anything. It wasn't destroyed with the mindlink. You still have it.”

Talpini faces grin at her in her memory.

“This has nothing to do with anything you’ve done before. _Nothing_. It will use your abilities differently. Only you can do it. No one else.” 

Why he isn’t dragging her back? Why hasn’t he put up that connection up and made the world and her own will go away? Why isn't he hauling her back just as he had before? 

"I’ll tell you more back at the cabin. Please!"

How could she _help_ the man who took everything from her? It's monstrous.

Mara takes one step forward. 

The Jedi doesn't let her go far, a blink and he's there, reaching to yank her back but her whole arm is wet from the rain, and more than that, the ground beneath her wet feet is slippery. Her feet slide and she's not stepping out of his hold, she’s slipping, tumbling down, and hitting the water with a crash.

Mara doesn’t feel cold, just the pull of the current and impact, blunt and overwhelming at the side of her head. She swallows water, splutters, throat contracting. Her senses grow dim, but not enough to override the struggle for air as she keeps breathing water. If anything, her awareness becomes fever bright as she flails, trying to yank her head up, but only more water rushes around her. She burns to breathe, pressure in her lungs searing, stinging just behind her forehead as she’s swept up in the flow. 

This is just what she wants, except it’s not at all.

In the midst of her thrashing, she’s hauled out bodily. She can breathe --finally-- chokes on water again as she vomits it out. Cold, wet ground lies under her hands as she's wracked with spluttering coughs, her heart pounding in her chest.

_I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry_ is what it says with every beat. 

Her arms collapse, and the Jedi's arms tightens around her waist scooping her up, clasping her tight and _close_ , saying things she can't understand as the the rain pours down harder, stinging her skin with cold where it's not against the Jedi's drenched tunic. His hold jostles and she realizes the reason she can't make out what he's saying is because his face is pressed against her shoulder.

_I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry_ is what the rushing water roars behind her.

Everything washes away.

* * *

_“Was it bad?”_

_It was horrible, her face blank and confused, her voice small and lonely as she asked the same question over and over again. At least she'd believed him when he'd told her he was a friend, even if it had been only for a few moments before she asked who he was once more._

_It'd gone on all morning._

_This wasn't the first time he'd seen it._

_Luke shook his head, went to sit next to her at the table. She was back, so it was fine now. “You were just...disoriented for a while.”_

_Mara exhaled. “You're a terrible liar." But she leaned against him."First, forgetting things. You think it's normal for a while. Misplacing things, then...how long was it this time?”_

_“I didn't keep track." It'd been the longest yet. "But you're okay now.”_

_A few more seconds passed. “Luke, you shouldn't have stayed," she whispered, "You got me here, you dropped me off, and I'm grateful, but I know you have your sister and her family and your research. From here on in Karrde said he could send someone -- I could just have them comm you."_

_That wasn't what she meant to say, he knew. He had learned if he were quiet she'd get to it by herself. He stayed quiet now, aware of the press of her shoulder against his. He thought of that lost look on her face right before they went into the research center, the furtive look towards him, and the way it'd made the tightness in her posture ease a little when she'd met his eyes._

_He wasn't going anywhere. Maybe he'd known when she'd told him that she'd stopped flying. Just until she sorted the memory issues, she said. They'd both thought it might have been that encounter with C'baoth, the neurological effects of electric charges. He remembered his own crucible with the calcification diagnosis he'd gotten shortly before the Bakura campaign. They'd both thought his file and input might be helpful to the physicians in the center, but they'd been doing preliminary testing for the moment._

 _Her voice cut through his thoughts. "I just wonder what if...it takes me back--”_

_“You said you never hear anything." He reached to squeeze her hand. "Never. That’s gone.”_

_She made a dismayed sound that he'd never heard from her before." _Everything_ is gone when it happens. I suppose I should be grateful at least it's not...that. But I was supposed to be training this year and here I am taking your time with this. It's not fair." _

_"You don't have to worry about that. I'm currently unemployed." Luke smiled at her. "All I have is time. We're not even that far --" They weren't. Centax-3 was one of Coruscant's moons. "I can see Han and Leia and the twins over the weekend." He tilted his head at her. "It's...peaceful here. Good for researching." Thinking it over, he added, "You can kick me out if you want your space. I don't want to overstay my welcome." He held his breath._

_Mara shook her head. "It's too big a place just for me. Excessive." Her lips formed a tiny smile. He heard a shadow of her usual wryness. "And if you say it's good for research..."_

_"It is." How long it'd be before she allowed herself to ask for things?_

_It was fine. He'd simply offer._

_"The scan," she said after a moment, her smile fading, "it--"_

_“You don't have to tell me if it's personal."_

_"You don't have to be here. But you are. So..." She drew another breath, and he knew she'd wanted to, and while not asking, it felt important, an offer of her own._

_"They found... anomalies. Several white areas in the readout. Hyperintensities, they called them. I have to go back in tomorrow for another scan. They had the readouts from -- from after Wayland, and it's a -- a larger area. They said that the affected area is...growing...." Her turmoil was a jagged thing through the Force, and maybe it wasn't just an offer._

_Maybe it was also a request._

_He squeezed her hand as she continued, "Seems like quicker and quicker. They don't know why."_

_"The neural regeneration," He ignored the pulse of dread in his stomach. "Can they try that again? Or something like it?"_

_"I--I don't know. I should have asked I just..." Her voice dipped, rose again, a flurry of emotions crossing her face. "They told me and I just couldn't...I wasn't thinking." She forced out an incredulous laugh. "Given everything, I guess I shouldn't have been shocked."_

_Her eyes were back on her hands. "You know, all this...maybe...maybe it's things evening out. I've thought since Wayland-- "_

_"No, no. It's not like that." There'd be more experts to consult. She'd only been here a few days._

_And there was the Force. He'd barely made a dent on the Chu'unthor texts before he'd gotten derailed with the Thrawn crisis._

_"They didn't specify for how long they'd wanted me to stay." She sighed. "Could be weeks or a couple of months."_

_The texts he'd looked at he hadn't even read all that carefully._

_"So that trip to the temple...I made all the arrangements weeks ago. Thought it'd be a surprise." She raised her head. "You should go ahead, Luke. I don't think I'll be able to go with you. Not without them giving me a timetable for all the testing."_

_"No, it's fine." His throat felt tight. The weight of the gesture threatened to be lost under a sinking feeling. It'd be fine, he promised silently. Keeping his tone casual, he chided, "You shouldn't have gone through all that trouble when you had scheduling this on your plate. I didn't expect you to."_

_She met his eyes. "I wanted to. It was a good distraction. Felt...normal. I just thought they'd only keep me for a few days."_

_"It's okay. Give me the codes for everything, and I'll get on the comm and postpone it. It'll be better to go next dry season anyway. After we figure out how to sell it to Karrde. Trips to secret underground temples just aren't the same without someone to complain to about how cold and dirty the passageways to them are."_

_She smiled shakily, and gradually he felt her relax against him. "I'm sorry."_

_"Don't be," he replied lightly. "We'll go later." He dared to smooth back her hair. "We'll just go later."_

* * *

Mara wakes up to sun on her face, thick blankets over her. Sunlight washes through the windows and she sits up slowly with a weak, but painful cough. Her chest feels sore. All of her body does in a distant way. She's wearing her sleep tunic.

Sitting up makes her aware that she's on the sofa. The Jedi sits facing away from her on the ground, his back to the sofa, only the back of his head visible to her. 

This has happened before. Her memories are foggy, but none of it seems important. She's warm and relaxed. Oh, she puts together. The Jedi. 

This is his doing.

_It’s nothing like a mindlink. It’s...shallow. An easy connection to undo. Just this once._

Not just once, Mara's lost track of all the times.

So many lies, she thinks distantly.

“There’s a possibility,” the Jedi rasps, startling her, “that if we’d had this when we came back, this wouldn’t have happened.”

He sounds different.

"I hadn't put it up since you started talking again. I thought..." Angry, she places, he's angry. But it's got no bearing on her. "I thought you wouldn't need it anymore."

She only feels calm.

“This isn't real,” Mara murmurs to herself. This buoyed feeling...she’s not so far gone that she doesn’t remember the chasm inside her where her master’s power had lived. This thing between them is no more than...sedation. 

“Over the dependency,” the Jedi cranes his head to look up at her and she thinks blandly, he lied about reading her mind too. “Yes.”

There’s something dark behind the blue of his eyes, and something's changed, she just doesn't know what. 

He turns away from her and heads to the kitchen. She watches as he gets the neutralizer and pops them in a glass of water. He'll bring the glass to her like long ago. She'll drink it now just as she did then.

Memories of rushing water come back to her when she closes her eyes. 

* * *

She sleeps for most of the morning on the sofa. The connection goes down at some point, but she eases into herself and keeps drifting in and out. The Jedi rouses her for an early lunch, calling her. Her stomach feels hollowed out with hunger. Mara pushes the blanket aside and goes. 

The Jedi places the bowl of soup before her when she sits at the table, watches as she pulls it closer and drinks. He's in her mind too. It's to be expected, she supposes. The world’s hue becomes grainier once the connection fades away, but she’s getting used to it. 

He gets his own plate, taking his seat. "The sleep tunic you're wearing is yours," he tells her. "All your clothing is. If you don't like it you'll be able to buy ones you do at Nialin."

Mara doesn't feel like thinking about any of that anymore.

"You're going to get better," the Jedi says, matter of fact. "Because I have a task for you. I took you from the Empire for it at considerable trouble, I've been keeping you here at considerable trouble while you heal, and you're going to complete it."

Mara stares down at the bowl. He doesn't say _or_. There's no need, Mara thinks. She owns the _or_ \-- in the sound of rushing water at her ear, the pain in her chest as she breathes. She owns the _or_. It's a weird feeling.

The Jedi slides her his datapad, showing her a map of Akiva with highlighted areas. He must have gotten a new battery for it from Nialin.

“Those are caverns. Passages. In ancient times the beings who made these passages had some relation to the kyber crystals from the network of caves below Akiva’s surface.”

Mara takes another sip of her soup. 

“Kybers are best known as lightsaber focusing crystals. They have different properties, no two are alike," the Jedi explains, his face blank. "Those properties are only discernible by beings with special abilities. Force users. The Empire has either full control of the Force users working for them." He pauses fractionally. "Like Vader. Or it has wiped them out. Like the Jedi."

_One that hasn’t been seen for hundreds of years._

Mara looks down at her bowl, pushing the memory away, the ache of nothing. It could bury her if she let it. That's the _or_.

"I have no interest in the Empire, as I've said. I do have an interest in kyber crystals."

She coughs again and winces at the throb in her chest, but it makes it so she can find words easier somehow. “You want me to help you search for them?” Absurd. She's in no shape for that. They both know it.

Mara raises her eyes to find the Jedi's gaze fixed on her. “I'll get them. You're to help me classify them.”

“Classify them?”

“Interact with them. Take notes. Create detailed files. It's not the actual crystals I want. It's knowledge about them." Mara's eyes slides down to the map, the sinuous areas in it marked in dark blue.

"The Jedi Order themselves considered the study of kyber crystals...esoteric," the Jedi goes on. "They limited engagement with them to a lightsaber's focusing crystal, but texts from before the Jedi Order suggest kyber crystals were entities to commune with for a variety of purposes. Back then whatever knowledge Tythian mystics acquired from the kybers, they passed down orally. Through war and time, it was lost. The Order never cared to have it back."

Mara takes another sip of her soup. It's hard to follow what he's saying, too many unfamiliar terms. She sneaks a glance at the Jedi, he has a distant expression as he says, "All Force users can interact with the crystals to a certain extent, but someone like you with an ability to quickly form affective bonds will find more success interacting with a variety of kyber crystals at depth. Further on you'll gather enough...data to develop an archive."

For a second she almost asks for what purpose. She decides she doesn’t want to know. There's only rushing water there.

"You're not well enough to begin now. I'll give you documents so you can start by familiarizing yourself from kybers through secondary materials, as much as you're able to. Once you regain your inner balance, you'll have to pick up a few extra skills. Your abilities will make it so you take to all of it easily, but it'll take time, especially factoring your recovery."

He appears too certain, she thinks, and there it dawns on her something that should have been obvious from the start. “Wait, your lightsaber -- you don't --”

"I couldn't bring it with me," he cuts her off and stands, going to get rid of his plate. "And I knew I wouldn't need it anyway." 

* * *

The Jedi transfers file after file to Mara's datapad later that afternoon. Many of them are histories of Akiva. Some are histories of other places, Mara learns, known for their kyber veins. Her mind stumbles over the fact that many of them are actual Jedi texts. Some geological surveys, and primers to make sense of them are sprinkled in, and she turns to those with relief.

It by no means looks like easy reading. The Aurebesh in the titles floats before her eyes as she toggles through them.

"Don't push it," the Jedi tells her sharply. She doesn't know if he'd read her dismay on her face or from her mind. Maybe it's all the same now. "You're not going to be able to handle all of it now or in a while. Start small and take breaks."

It stings, but she does. It's pathetic. She starts simply skimming the primers, stares at the diagrams and holos in the primers. After a while, she can't. Instead, she goes and opens up a paint program and draws geometric figures. The Jedi calls her a while later to go with him out to the plot. She fiddles with the painting program after they return, stops when the Jedi calls her for dinner.

After, she goes to the room, stops at the threshold to look down the hall. The bed was by the window.

She'd gone to the room she'd slept in before. The room that the Jedi uses now.

Mara has no idea why. That's the most frightening part.

She inhales, pushing the thoughts aside, and steps into the room, gets a new sleep tunic. She goes to change and get ready for bed in the attached 'fresher. The Jedi is waiting when she comes out. Her stomach her lurches at seeing him there. She freezes at the doorway.

The Jedi gestures her towards the bed.

She plods along to it, climbs on, and settles, stomach tight.

"Before last night I thought you were getting better," he says neutrally. "And you might have been. At your own pace." 

She looks down at her hands.

"But after last night, I'm not risking anything. The link will go up at night all this week. Depending on your progress we'll phase it out or we'll keep on until I'm certain there won't be more repeats. It'll be gone by morning. You'll wake up as you were as long as you continue to take care of your basic needs."

Mara swallows. The Jedi rarely talks about the link. Or he hasn't at all -- she thinks back -- not since he'd put it up after the 'fresher incident. When he's put it up, he just does.

This feels different.

"Do you understand?"

Mara blinks. He's never asked that either. What would he do if she said no? Wipe her out probably.

She thinks of her lungs burning for air, _or..._ Mara tips her head forward. It's the closest she can come to a nod.

It's just like sleeping, she tells herself. Better than tossing in bed.

Better than drowning.

* * *

Mara wakes up feverish and with body pain on the third day after the river. A cold obviously. The Jedi seems to agree when he comes to see why she hasn’t gotten up. The fever doesn’t break by evening and the Jedi’s expression becomes drawn. He'd eased up on his nagging since the river, but it comes back in full force now.

“Just a cold.” She says between coughs, grimaces because her chest still hurts, and all his pestering that she have water and drink down her meal is irritating. She's doing what she can.

He shoots her a sharp look. “You’re underweight -- I’m not even sure by how much -- and I’m not sure about the state of your immune system either.” His lips tighten and he pushes another glass of water and a painkiller her way. She takes both and sleeps.

Mara wakes up a short while later -- it’s still dark outside the windows -- shivering despite the blankets on her. She’s not sure if enough time passed to take the next dose of painkillers. While she’s trying to work it out with her addled brain, she gets a coughing fit that goes louder and longer than she expected.

Naturally, the light clicks on and there’s the Jedi, a thermo-reader in hand.

“I was --” she breaks off with another coughing fit, shielding her eyes. Her whole chest is beyond sore. “Wanted a painkiller,” she wheezes, gets wracked by yet another bout of coughing. The Jedi doesn't say anything as he presses the reader to her forehead until it beeps.

The Jedi brings up the reader. His face becomes even more drawn. 

“What?” she croaks.

“It’s higher. It's been long enough.” He grabs the painkiller bottle from her bedside table.

She shifts -- her whole body feels like an enormous bruise -- and fumbles for the pills the Jedi's handing her, washes them down with water.

"More blankets?" he asks, his tension palpable. She nods and he brings her an extra one he puts over her. Her sluggish brain happens on something else.

“Jedi heal, don't they? You did.” She waves at her neck.

His pall of anxiety deepens visibly. “A cut is one thing. Sprains. Broken bones. An actual illness is complicated. There’s many factors. Some I don’t...” He shakes his head.

So the old fashioned way, she thinks as the Jedi turns off the light. 

Waking up next time happens nebulously. The Jedi’s voice comes to her from a distance. It's not really waking up, and that's fine.

Cold!

Her eyes fly open. Mara gulps in a breath, immediately doubling over to cough. She’s in -- in the tub -- her whole body feels like a broken marionette’s, as she shivers convulsively. She’s in the tub. It’s filled with water, but ice cold -- there's...glass? No, _ice_. Ice in the tub. She looks over at the Jedi as she hunches in the water, the cold stabbing at her as she wraps her heavy arms around herself. She tries to get out, but she no longer shifts forward than the Jedi’s hand is on her shoulder. 

She looks up to see his eyes swim in her vision, large and transparent blue, the pupils stark.

“--lower -- high an --gerous.” 

Mara inches back.

“Cold,” she mumbles, and he’s offering her a cup with a straw. Water. She shakes her head. Everything is too bright; her head is pounding, and she's _freezing_. She pushes slightly to get up away from the water in clumsy movements. After a moment the Jedi reaches for a towel, wraps it around her and half lifts her out of the tub.

She must have lost consciousness after. The next time she wakes up she’s dressed in her sleep tunic and in the bed. The Jedi’s handing her pills. The pain throughout her body is there, along with the cough. She takes a long drink of water and drifts off.

The next time she wakes, she does so fully, soaked in sweat. 

It’s dark outside again. Mara sits up slowly, her body feeling like a block of duracrete. A fever, she pieces together. A cold. She thinks back to the river. A souvenir.

She feels the Jedi in the room, sees his shadowy outline by the slivers of illumination that come through the window, sitting on a chair by the desk. None of the light passes over his face, but he's still which makes her think he's asleep. He's in her mind, but that doesn't tell her much.

Mara slowly shifts to slide her feet from the bed and to the floor. She's not trying to be silent and the floorboards creak, but the Jedi doesn't move.

She pads to the main living area. It's not raining tonight and the wider windows bring in more light from the glittering ground beyond the veranda. 

Mara finds herself looking to the darkened doorway of the room. How long has she been out exactly? She stops at the thought. No answer comes, as she continues on to the kitchen, to turn the light on. Several pots soak in the sink. That's odd. The Jedi tends to put them back as soon as he's done.

An empty medium-sized crate sits on top of the chair the Jedi uses. It's contents appear to be medical paraphernalia which lie strewn all over the table, some on the floor in disarray. Curiosity has Mara darting towards the mess, sitting at the table to look through all the material. It seems close to a first aid kit, bandages of all sizes and types tossed about the table, a few on the floor, a variety of ointments across the table, cases and cases of hypos. Much more comprehensive than a normal first aid kit, she decides with an eerie feeling. There’s the IV bags he’s threatened with and bottle after bottle of medicine turned on their sides. It's as if he'd turned the box over in a rush. Mara gingerly grabs one from the bunch of downturned ones nearest her, looks at its label. 

_Name and use, please._

A lesson. A memory. Silverstone and alabaster. Mara shuts her eyes and stands turning her face. I’m not fit for it. I’m not fit for any of it.

It's better to forget.

She puts the bottle back on the table, standing it. Alone, it towers above the other fallen bottles. Last one standing.

Mara feels the Jedi wake then, mainly because of the press of his mind mere seconds before he shows up at the doorway to her room. It's something she hasn't registered before, that the pressure of his mind is greater upon hers when he's awake. The difference between flood lights and ambient lighting.

“Hey,” he rasps, squinting.

He looks rumpled, unshaven, and _exhausted_. How long had she been sick? She thinks back to the river. He'd wanted her for something. All of this was because he wanted her for something. A job. He took her away, couldn't lose her because of it. Had to have been important then.

She tries and tries to remember as he approaches the table. She can’t.

Mara tries a little harder.

“You feeling better?” The Jedi briskly goes to pick up the medicine bottles strewn on the table and drops them in the crate. She nods, watching as he crouches to pick the bandages and cases of hypos from the floor, filling up his arms with them before going back to the crate. Soon he's done and puts the crate down, slides it under the table with his bare foot. “Hungry?”

Mara nods again and goes to sits down at the table. “The job you wanted me for what was it?” 

“You don’t have to worry about that now,” he says offhandedly, going to get a bowl. He can't find it in the upper cabinet so he checks the sink. He makes a slight disappointed sound and turns the faucet on.

A long moment passes and Mara stares at him as he washes the bowl.

She's not sure why she whispers, "Asher."

He doesn't turn around. She'd said it too low, so she tries again. "Asher."

The Jedi still doesn't turn around. Mara continues looking at his back as he dries the bowl. That's not his name, she thinks. She'd known. It's a fake. That's why she doesn't think about him as that way.

He crouches to grab the flostarch and other ingredients from one of the lower cabinets, goes to the conserv and pulls out eggs.

"What was the job you wanted me for, Asher?" She speaks loudly enough when he straightens up from getting a skillet that he stops and turns his head towards her. Her voice sounds weird to her ears. "I don't remember what it was." There's a flash of something she can't read in his eyes. "I'm thinking back and--"

“Cataloguing kyber crystals," he replies quickly. He turns back to the stove, reaches for the eggs. "Lightsaber crystals."

_One that hasn’t been seen for hundreds of years._

That's why.

She shuts her eyes tightly, but the feelings rise like a wave and _break_ , as impossible to hold back as the water from a gushing spout until she’s bending over and sobbing into her hands.

The skillet sizzles behind her.


	14. Chapter 14

  


##### XIII. Groundwork

  


* * *

4.10

~~Should we really be doing this? Is there such a thing as a noble lie? A lie for the greater good? Why can't we just let it go?~~

* * *

~~~~

  


  


Her neck has a crick in it, Mara thinks as the water drips down her face. She must have slept on it wrong.

She’s bent forward over the sink, the thick mass of her hair in front of her down the basin, a towel over her shoulders to keep her tunic from getting wet, as the water runs. This is the first time since the river that she’s bathed, so the hair washing's absolutely necessary. The Jedi sweeps his hands from her nape over and around her head, before working them through her hair to lather it. His hands move methodically from one side of her head to the other, fingers rubbing against her scalp in circular motions. It’s lulling, so she ignores the tight feeling at her neck and closes her eyes, shoulders slackening. She feels him move a bit closer, warmth of him seeping into her in the narrow space as he half leans over to lather the mass of hair that has pooled in front of her. It's not unpleasant considering the slight chill on her after the bath.

The previous times he’s washed her hair, the Jedi prattled on about something or other, but he’s quiet now, as quiet as he’s been these past few days, only the sound of running water in the ‘fresher. It’s not that Mara cares about all his yammering; just that it’s a little disconcerting for it to be gone. She’d have thought the silence would be comforting, but the more it goes on the more that lulled feeling starts fading.

Mara feels the Jedi reach for the cup beside him to begin rising the soap off, his hand sweeping down the right side of her head, her nape, the left side of her head. He leans to get at the rest of her hair in the basin.

”Okay,” he says when he’s done, which she’s come to take as a signal to grab her hair, give it a wring, and take a short step back, the hair a wet column over her face nearly at the rim of the basin. The Jedi quickly brings the sides of the towel around her head and gathers her hair into it, twisting until he pulls it back to sit atop her head. She’ll stay like this for the next twenty minutes.

Her neck protests as she straightens up.

The Jedi catches it somehow and meets her eyes. He gestures at the towel. “Too tight?”

She shakes her head. “A crick.” She rubs the side of her neck.

The Jedi stops. Mara thinks he's going to say something, but he appears to think better of it. He grabs the cup, and leaves the ‘fresher and her room, probably to go fiddle with the cleaning droid. He’d been working on it since the morning.

Mara goes to her datapad. She’s been slowly, _painfully_ , making her way through a stuffy holodoc rather unimaginatively titled _Akiva’s Crystals and Gemstones_ , which details the basic principles of identifying precious stones, trying to remember the categories of gravity, magnetism, electricity and hardness.

It’s rough going. She has trouble making it through paragraph by paragraph. She remembers herself just before the mission, devouring text after text about Myrra, about the Satrapy and their political alliances. Now just half a page takes hours for her brain to wrap around.

The Jedi had warned her about this, hadn’t he? Occasionally, she wonders just how ill she’d been. Her memories of the scattered contents of the medkit have an eerie cast now where they didn’t before. She doesn’t know what to make of it. She'd thought it was a cold.

”Not a cold,” the Jedi had corrected a couple of days back when she’d mentioned it offhandedly. “Probably something viral. Could have been da’al fever.” He’d projected reluctance as he'd gone on, “You were delirious for several days.” His tone had sharpened into reproof. “You can’t be missing meals.”

She hasn't since the fever broke. While the Jedi might be quieter than before, he nags her about eating just as much, and she’s _trying_ now, she’s just not really that hungry as a rule. Besides, she could eat a whole nerf and the Jedi would still be radiating disapproval that _she didn’t have enough, she should really have another bite_.

Besides, da’al fever, as far as she knows, is one of those illnesses transmitted through gnats, hardly lethal when you have antibiotics. By now she’s sure the Jedi has several types in that traveling medcenter of his. Still, given the illness and her general inactivity, it’s little wonder her head is sluggish, and she has trouble focusing. She hasn’t picked up anything to read in months -- she hasn’t dared to figure out how many. It’s only natural that she’d have to work at getting herself back up to speed.

Trying to get her brain to wake back up, she's started doing more around the cabin. She’d begun copying the Jedi in minor menial tasks, separating her clothes, wiping down the table, the desk, the windowsill, tidying up the table. She’d even tried her hand at working with the compost bin, but has trouble remembering what to do, though she's observed the Jedi do it countless times. This morning when she’d given it another go, she’d found a flimsi adhered to the cabinet door with step-by-step instructions. She'd followed them. It'd been stupid to feel accomplished at something so trivial, but these days it takes enough effort to try to figure out where she left her datapad.

Her memory continues to be as fragile as a spiderweb. Mara continues taking painstaking notes and reviewing the material again and again, trying not to think about the way her recall had been praised before. 

Before is dead. 

This is all she’s got.

A knock sounds at her door and she lifts her head from the datapad.

The Jedi gestures to the towel on her head from her half-open door. “Your hair should be drier now.”

Mara gives an acknowledging nod, and goes back to her reading. From her peripheral vision she sees him go to the bedside table where he keeps the comb and brush, and go for the comb. She barely remembers him using the brush, maybe at some point in the beginning. She has no inclination to start using it herself. Her hair’s just a hassle. She's waiting for the Jedi to suggest getting rid of it.

If he doesn’t, she will.

For now, she just keeps reading as he sits behind her and sections her hair to begin combing it out. It’s routine, save for the silence, and it feels off for some reason. She puts the datapad down.

“You should have gotten a new cleaning droid at Nialin. That model is ancient, no wonder it’s breaking down. It had issues even from before.”

He doesn’t stop what he's doing, namely holding the section of her hair as he gently picks at a knot with a vaguely disagreeing grunt. “Just needed oiling before.”

”And now?”

”New axial piston probably." He's combed out the knot and moves to the next section. It's the kind of short, to the point response that's common these days. It should be a relief, not heaving to deal with his constant stream of words anymore.

Mara frowns, speaks up, almost in spite of herself. “To get to the axial piston, you’re going to have to take apart all the outer casing and the chassis. It’s a pain.”

The comb stops moving for a couple of seconds before it resumes. Another knot and he lifts the section to pick at it. “It’s not that bad.”

Mara humphs and turns her head back down to the datapad. The motion is too abrupt for her stiff muscles and she flinches.

”That crick could be from too much time bending your neck." 

"No, I’m taking it easy,” she interrupts. “Like you said. And it’s going slow.”

”That’s fine. You have to be patient.”

Mara makes a noise between a snort and a scoff.

The Jedi stops combing. She feels him lean over her shoulder. “Which one is it?” 

He scans a snippet of the text in front of her. “ Ah. Dry. It would be slow.”

Mara's grip on the datapad tightens. “I don’t -- I find it difficult to remember what I've--I...lose my place. A lot."

She feels the Jedi freeze. but it's only for a few seconds, then he returns to his original position and resumes combing her hair. “You don't have to memorize anything. All of that is more or less helpful in a general sense, but the types of interactions you’ll have are different from figuring out gravity indexes or piezoelectric scoring.” Again he lets a few beats pass. “You haven’t felt up to looking up the kyber crystals in particular --the documents specifically on them?”

Mara is tempted not to reply. Instead, she finds herself saying, “I thought I’d start with general overviews.” 

It isn’t a lie exactly, she’d always preferred getting context before delving into specifics, but the truth was she _hadn’t_ wanted to look over the files in the folder labeled _temple files_. Her stomach twists whenever she looks at the Aurebesh. Betrayal, something inside her whispers.

She can’t make herself click on them.

”Not a bad idea,” the Jedi replies noncommittally, and he’s done with the combing. “Let it dry a bit more.” He stands and puts the comb away. “We’ll braid it later.” 

With that, he goes back out, and Mara toggles away from the text and into her graphics program, drawing figure after figure in bright neon color. Erasing them. Doing it over and over again.

* * *

The weather gets more temperate and a bit less humid outside as the rainy season starts waning. They don’t go out to the stream, haven’t since that night at the river, but in the afternoons they take to sitting on the veranda, under the extended roof watching the rain come down, since truly violent downpours are less frequent. Sometimes after the Jedi’s done with the plot if it's not raining too hard or there is a lull, he takes her to a clearing not too far from the cabin. It’s in the area past the front of the cabin. South.

It’s not the stream though, and while Mara sits on a log and looks at the birds overhead and tries to parse out the various leaves and ferns from the jumble of color, her hand itches for a good stone to throw. She misses all the sounds a stone can make as it skids across the water, when it sinks, misses it even more with each passing day. 

The illness hadn’t derailed the Jedi from the terms he’d set up after the river. Every night since she’d recovered from the fever, he’d put up the link. It’s become routine, an afterthought. Mara gets the sense he could do it from the other room, but they have a specific procedure established: his knock on her door after she’s settled in listening to the rain beat down, an inquisitive look from the Jedi, followed by an “Okay?” She nods, and she knows nothing until the next day when it's gone.

Mara always feels when the link goes down. Those are the darkest spots of her day, times when she buries her head in her pillow, feeling as if her insides are jagged pieces grinding themselves into nothing. The fog is closest then. She hasn’t made it without crying once, and she’s discovered the harder it hits her, the harder she lets it hit her then, the easier her day goes. It’s something else she has no explanation for.

Several days after the hair washing, the Jedi knocks on the door as she’s shifting to make herself more comfortable for sleep, thunder rumbling just outside.

Mara stops moving the minute he walks in, seized by the feeling that there's something wrong. She lifts her head to look as he approaches, feeling her brows scrunch.

“What is it?” she whispers, immediately tensing.

“Nothing,” he says, but he doesn’t look at her. After a beat, he continues in an odd voice, words coming out just a little too fast. “Just what I told you...before you got sick. The link, I was meaning to use it for only a week. Given the illness, I thought keeping it around longer would be good, so we’ve done two, but I think it’s time to start doing without it. See if you can try sleeping on your own.” His tone is new, neither the aggressively friendly chatter of the first months, nor the more clipped, removed cadence of the past two weeks. Not that it matters.

Mara frowns. She doesn’t like the idea, but it’s hard to pinpoint why. 

The thought surfaces, an answer. Because it works. Because it’s routine.

”It’ll be fine,” the Jedi says in a casual tone she knows is pure facade. “If it gets too difficult, we’ll adjust. It’ll be a rough night, I think, but you’ll transition in a bit. I don’t…” The calmness of his expression cracks into the anxiety that used to be ever-present. “I don’t want it to become a crutch.” 

That’s familiar from him.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep,” she sums up.

”Not a lot, probably." He sounds more like before again, like him insisting that eating will be good for her, taking a bath will be good for her, him insisting that he has no ulterior motive, all he wants to do is help her. She instinctively recoils all of her feeling that none of this is to be trusted. “Not at first, but give it a shot.” Him talking as if she had a choice, that’s familiar, too. “Like everything, it’ll get better. We’ll figure it out. I’ll be here anyway if it gets to be too much.”

Mara bites her lip. She’s not all that clear about the worst that she’s done to herself. With the passing of days, she’s found gaps in what she recalls. The irretrievability of all of her memories worries her less than the fact that she doesn’t understand what she’d been thinking. There’s a gulf between a deep sense of misery and actually lifting a hand to slit her own throat or trying to drown herself. Somehow she’d crossed over that gulf.

She doesn’t want it to happen again.

Mara meets the Jedi’s eyes, clearly, he doesn’t want it to either. If she’s dead, she can’t do what he brought her here for.

“If it’s too much, we’ll adjust,” he repeats. “Bring the link back up for the rest of the night. Okay?”

She’s valuable to him, she tells herself. He _has_ poured considerable time and resources into ensuring her cooperation, and this is all for her to accomplish her task. It merits a certain kind of trust. Transactional, sure, but that’s exactly why it functions and why it's real. She inhales and nods.

He gives her a last look and turns, closing the door behind him. She clicks off the light at her bedside table.

At first, all seems normal, as if she’s simply waiting for the link to go up. The minutes, hours begin passing and Mara tosses, finally sits up and looks out the window to the dark outside. The bugs never shine when it's raining, maybe they scurry into a hole somewhere to avoid being swept away by the rain. She stares long enough to register that she’s tired, but as she crawls back into bed, all she feels is the return of an unnameable anxiety.

Mara sits up again and turns on the light, reaching for her datapad. She opens it to the Akivan stones and gemstones document, eyes roving over the high resolution images of the various crystals. She’s unsure how much time has passed, but her eyelids feel heavy. She puts the datapad away and lies back on the bed, listening to the rain, holding the images of the sparkling crystals in her mind. Finally, she feels herself drift off to sleep.

_She stands in front of the table. The Jedi is approaching from the room down the hall._

_She can’t move._

_She gasps, her heart beat stuttering, squeezes her eyes shut. She can't run, so she breathes in deeply, draws herself in --_

_Finds nothing._

_He’s coming closer. She needs to run._

_She can’t --_

Mara wakes up with her heart power hammering in her throat, barely being able to breathe. Her hands rise up to her face. She’s shaking and the sheets are tangled around her ankles. A ragged sob springs to her throat as she curls tightly on the bed.

”Not real,” she whispers to herself. “Not real. Not real.”

When she finally calms down enough to uncurl, she notes it’s still dark outside, though she doesn't hear the _tap-tap_ of the rain. It's too quiet. Mara can’t imagine sleeping the rest of the night. Not like this.

The Jedi is outside in the kitchen or living room. What is he doing there, in the middle of the night? But at the same time, he's...far from her mind. Had she woken him? How much of her nightmare had he sensed?

Mara sits, resting her forearms on her thighs, her back bowing. The feelings remain: being held down, unable to move, and waiting, waiting for the worst. Silence.

She shuts her eyes, and can see the Jedi as a darkened shadow, approaching. Her whole body feels clammy with sweat. Mara opens her eyes again. She'd like to never close them. 

She doesn’t know what to do. She just wants it to _stop_.

Mara goes to flip the light switch, but it doesn’t turn on. When she drops her hand to the bedside table, she feels something sharp and quickly draws her hand away. Glass?

Distracted by the mystery, she stands and walks to the switch for the main room light. That one doesn’t turn on either.

Taking a deep breath, she opens her door, blinks at the kitchen and living room lights. 

The Jedi sits at the table, looking down at his datapad. There's a reason he's there, something he must have mentioned. 

She can't remember it.

Mara shifts her weight back onto her heels. He raises his head to look at her, expression concerned. Not a shadow.

She’s valuable. He wouldn’t hurt her again. She wouldn’t be able to do what he brought her here for if he did.

Mara opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Her chest grows tight and she takes a step back into her room, closes the door and teeters back against it, sliding down, holding her knees to her chest.

After a while she notices tepid light outside the window in the distance. It probably won't rain anymore tonight, so the bugs have come out. Something catches the glimmer of the ground a few feet in front of her. Rather than get up, she scoots towards it. It’s glass. The main light fixture of the room’s somehow blown. Mara looks up, but in the dark can’t see too much.

A soft knock. The door opens, just a crack, and her heart’s back in her throat for a second at the figure of the Jedi, the lights from the kitchen at his back. She can't --

”I thought I heard something break,” he ventures. “You're okay so I didn’t want to...disturb you, but...”

He stays at the doorway for a long moment. Mara wants to reply, but every one of her muscles is frozen.

”I should...clean up whatever broke. I don’t want you to step on it or anything."

Her voice comes back in a shaky whisper, “I want to go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay.”

* * *

Mara wakes up at the same time as usual in the morning once the link goes down. After the memories of the night come back to her, she turns to look at the bedside table, unsurprised that there’s no signs of the glass there or in her room. The Jedi must have cleaned it up after she went to bed and he’d put the link back up.

She goes to the 'fresher and the Jedi is in the kitchen as usual, cutting up Jogan fruit to place in a bowl. It’s from the garden, a smaller version of what she’d had before. It tastes different too, more bitter.

Mara goes to the conserv for the fermented nerf milk and honey, puts those on the table.

“So not too bad,” the Jedi says as he brings the bowl of fruit over. “All things considered. Last night.”

She doesn’t care for a debrief, she thinks, turning to go get a bowl. The Jedi is close enough in her mind that he should be able to gauge things without her input.

Evidently, he catches _something_ because he says, ”I’m not going to be pulling things out of your head, so it’s a good idea for you to work with me.” His tone is curt, almost impatient.

She flashes him an irritated look. “And it has to be right after I’m up?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. The faint embarrassment on his face is a surprise, a small victory. That expression feels eerily familiar too. 

“Point.” He goes to serve himself some fruit from the bowl. “It’s still important we figure out what works and what doesn’t. If you need time, that’s fine, but we should at least go over what you feel able to.” 

Mara goes to the counter and turns on the autokettle. 

The Jedi continues. “All of this is part of phasing out the link.”

She stays by the kettle, and crosses her arms over her chest. “You can add light fixtures to the shopping list for when we go back to Nialin. That was me, wasn’t it?”

The Jedi nods. He’s reaching for the fermented milk. “We can try working on that. Those are your abilities manifesting. The fixtures are nothing. We have spares.”

Mara tilts her head. She never could use her mind to interact with the physical world before. It has a draw she doesn't want to contemplate, too linked to before. “Why now?”

”I’m not entirely sure. Probably the regulatory function of the mindlink. Maybe it worked as a...a type of restraining bolt until it took. So your abilities were intertwined with it, restrained by it.”

Mara scoffs. “And now they’ve gone berserk and are a hazard.”

The Jedi makes a noise of disagreement. “A little unruly. Not a hazard. This is the first time they’ve manifested that way --” He stops. “Actually, the second.” 

In spite of herself she asks,“I blew out the lights before?”

He shakes his head. “You lifted the furniture in the room -- the other one. Well, tried. It was bolted.”

”When?”

A long moment later he says, “One of the times you came to after -- after the mindlink was removed. You weren’t really conscious, but you reached out with the Force. It was too much too soon -- it overwhelmed you. You had a -- not a great reaction.”

She hopes he means that she passed out again, but can’t help wondering if he refers to something worse. She doesn’t ask.

The kettle beeps, and she pours the boiling water into her mug. She looks for the strainer and lowers it into the mug before adding the chopped ch’hala roots he keeps in the cupboard. She's actually only started drinking it here.

Once she’s done, she takes her tea to the table.

Mara reaches for the bowl of fruit, and makes her tone as casual as possible when she says, “I want to go back to the stream.”


	15. Chapter 15

##### XIV. Lattice System

  


* * *

4.15

It’s occured to me that perhaps in trying to touch the kyber we were trying to touch something in ourselves. Maybe it’s nothing more than a mirror. ~~Maybe it’s only shown us our worst selves.~~

* * *

~~~~

  


  


”I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” the Jedi says after a long moment.

Mara looks down at her tea, she imagines she can see her own sullenness reflected back on its murky green surface. It’s been weeks. They can go back. She’s not even asking to go by herself.

She resents the urge to justify all this.

”I want to go back to the stream." She brings the hot tea to her lips to avoid saying the rest.

”You’re sure you want to?”

”I wouldn’t have asked if I weren’t,” she snaps.

The Jedi stays silent and that’s how breakfast goes. The day takes its usual pattern: reading, sitting by the plot, tidying up, the walk to the clearing in the same kind of stillness between them that is the new routine. It’s more charged now that her request lingers unanswered. She’s complying, there’s no reason to be refusing her this.

Mara resolves not to ask again. 

He installs the new fixtures in the afternoon after they return to the cabin. 

“It’ll do us no good if I blow them out again,” she mutters as he rewires the lamp at the bedside table.

“About that…” He doesn’t look up from his work. “I thought we could try settling you tonight. See if that helps.”

“Settling me?”

“Basic meditation. See if that will ground you so your abilities won’t manifest in that way.” A pause materializes, and Mara reads an odd awkward note in it. “Later on, if you like, you can learn how to channel your abilities with intent, but for now it’d be good to keep them from being a...an involuntary reaction.” He straightens up, turning to her.

It’s not the possibility of using these abilities so much as the hope for better sleep without the link that penetrates her sullenness. Her abilities without the crystals mean nothing, really.

She shrugs. “Yeah. Whatever.”

* * *

That evening, he asks her to pick a spot in the cabin to meditate. Mara picks the space in front of the living room windows, where the bugs create a gloomy light, diffusing through rain clouds. 

It's the spot he uses, she realizes belatedly. He meditates before breakfast. She's happened upon him when she's woken up too early. Well, it makes no difference.

“What you’re going through,” he begins quietly, sitting beside her, “the nightmares...there won’t be an easy solution, but maybe adjusting your focus will make the nights easier for you. What you feel won’t be gone outright, but little by little, the more you develop a calm interior space, the nightmares should have less...teeth. We can aim there for the moment.”

He seems to be waiting for acknowledgement so she nods.

“You have some familiarity with meditation? Focusing and calming your mind.”

Visualizations.

She inhales and looks away. Before is dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Mara shakes her head.

She feels the Jedi staring at her. An uncomfortable beat pases before he murmurs. “Okay, we’ll start with the basics. The gist of calming your mind is having a center to return to. Breathing’s often the most straightforward way to center yourself. Breathe in, count one, breathe out, two, and so on. Keep track, and focus only on that.”

Mara rests her hands on her thighs and closes her eyes. It does sound simple. She inhales, thinks _one_ , exhales and thinks, _two_. On the fourth, it starts feeling too familiar.

_Empty._

She opens her eyes with a sharp gasp, going rigid. She’s not thinking about that.

“That happens,” the Jedi says while she looks down at the floor. “When you get distracted, just come back to center. Keep your mind only on the counting.”

Mara tries it again, but can’t even complete two cycles, before the memories make her stiffen up. “I don’t know if this is going to work.”

“If this doesn’t," he says mildly, "there’s other approaches to try. Try subvocalizing. Count under your breath and hold the number in your mind until you finish the breath.”

Her focus gets better then, and she’s able to work through one meditation cycle before going through her evening routine.

It’s not exactly a success that first night as far as the nightmares are concerned. It isn’t the Jedi in the shadows like it'd been before. It's her -- her arms and legs cuffed to bed frame while flames crackle below her feet, searing heat at her soles. A grinning Talpini, smoke curling out of a hole in his forehead, looks on as she screams. 

She wakes up a crying mess, asking for the link as soon as she orients herself enough to stumble through her door, still shaking. 

The Jedi is at the table as always. He doesn’t make her ask twice.

* * *

The next morning after the Jedi’s done with the plot of land, Mara notes him dawdling as he puts his tools away. Instead of striding purposefully towards the path leading to the clearing, he gestures her to another direction. A variance in their pattern.

Mara realizes right away once they take the path behind the cabin. He’s taking her to the stream.

That’s a brightening thought given how the night had gone.

At least she hadn’t blown out the spare fixtures the Jedi had installed. From his demeanor you’d think it’s great progress. It’s no such thing. She’s yet to make it through a full night on her own. It’s agonizing in the moment, her trembling and sniveling, feeling that she’ll never find peace from the hysterical beat of her heart if it’s not through the link, at the moment she doesn't even think of the link as what it is, she just wants everything to stop. 

_You respond favorably to connection._

It’s not a connection, Mara reminds herself. It’s a chain. She has to stop herself sometimes from dwelling on it. Here there’s only rushing water, a whispered _waste of resources._

They’ve arrived at the stream, and for a long moment Mara just stares at the clear waters churning as they flow down and around the scattered rocks. The Jedi is beside her a few paces away, his eyes, and sense, on her as if at any point she’ll go throw herself into the water again. The stream is back to its usual, more shallow level, all of that vigilance is absurd.

The Jedi’s silence stands out to her even more here than when he tends to the plot of land; the babble of the stream seems too loud without a human voice as counterbalance, and while she can maybe ignore the absence of all that prattling for a while, it inevitably scratches and scratches at her. She adds it to the long list of things she can’t explain. 

”The files labeled as temple documents,” Mara starts hesitantly as she searches for a stone. She doesn’t have to look to know the Jedi is surprised she brought them up. “Where -- where did they come from? Are they...from the rebels?" It'd been a mistake to say that. She doesn't want to know. She doesn't.

”None of them are from the rebels,” he replies after a moment and she feels something in her loosen. He sounds softer than she expected, wistful. “Most of them are from the library at the old Jedi temple here -- there's one at the center of the training ground. The only document that isn’t is the collection of notes. But that’s not a Jedi text or gemology or history file at all. It’s more of a crystallographer’s note file.”

She lifts her head in his direction, stone in hand. “Why’d you give me a crystallographer’s note files?”

He’s looking ahead. “I thought it’d be a...unique perspective. Not a historian, not a gemologist, not a Jedi. Someone...different.”

Mara tosses the stone. Two skips. “And it’s not from here?”

”I got it over at the Terrabe sector. The Temple of the Kyber was on a moon there. She -- the crystallographer -- had the notes sent there. It’s not that far from here." His voice lowers. “Or wasn’t. It’s gone now.”

Mara turns her attention to searching for another stone. She doesn't want to think about _gone_.

”The Empire has never paid much attention to Akiva,” he volunteers after another moment. In a strange way it's better than silence, but it feels very different from the chatter he kept up before her fever. That had seemed brighter, oddly enough, more hopeful. “Even the Jedi Order treated the grounds here more like a historical landmark during the times of the Republic.” A few beats, then he adds, “All those texts weren't that hard to find.Most of the Jedi Temple library files in fact are based on other files scattered throughout the galaxy.” He turns to her. “What you know as the Imperial Library. A lot of what you find there can be found elsewhere, it’s just decentralized so you have to know where to look.” 

She knew that. Sort of. Mara thinks of the darkened high ceilings, the blue light off of the holocrons, shoves it aside as she grabs her next stone.

_It was a group of them sent to ambush me._

“You’ve been to the library at the Palace.” It’s half between a statement and a question.

Mara tosses the stone and nods. The stone skips twice.

”I thought you would have,” he murmurs.

* * *

Nights continue to be rough. The Jedi puts up the link some time before dawn so she at least gets a few hours of uninterrupted rest at night. It's not enough, so despite hating to sleep during the day, she ends up sectioning times for short naps. It still doesn't feel normal. 

“I think we should try something else,” he announces a few weeks later when they’re at the stream. His voice is even, but she can feel the latent frustration coloring it. “It’s been two weeks, I thought we’d have mostly phased out the link by now.”

She throws her stone and doesn’t answer.

”The nightmares are one thing, but I don’t want to make things worse.”

Mara begins looking for her next stone.

”Maybe we should try to do completely without it tonight.”

She finds one, but it’s too small, merely a pebble, so she keeps looking.

” _Mara_ ,” he calls in his naggy nasal tone. “Work with me.”

”What do you want me to say? You don’t bring the link up, I probably won’t sleep at all.”

”I can’t have you depending on it.” A few beats later he adds, “You’re going to be on your own eventually.”

”The dreams are about you,” she counters, letting the stone fly. It's not entirely true, but it mostly is. “Maybe once I’ll be on my own, they’ll be gone.”

There’s an upswell of feeling coming off him, hitting her hard enough that she winces. She can’t put a name to it. It feels like regret, anger, and shame all rolled into one. 

He has his mask of blankness on when she looks back at him, shakes his head at her with a reproving look.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says tersely. “I could be a million lightyears away and you’d be having the nightmares. It has nothing to do with the way things _are_. It’s something your mind has locked into and given a separate life.”

Mara turns back and begins to search for another stone, ignoring the eerie way he's phrased it.

”I know it’s because of what I did to you," he continues. "I'm not running away from that."

Mara wills him to stop talking, closes her hand around a nearby stone, though she knows it’s a bad one.

”It's _because_ of that that I have no intention of letting the link become a crutch,” he finishes firmly. “One night completely without the link. Let’s just test it. If it’s too soon, then we’ll go back to it tomorrow night. Or next week if we have to.”

She tosses it. The stone doesn’t skip at all.

” _Mara_.” The nasal tone is back.

”Whatever," she retorts. "You’re going to do what you want anyway.”

”You're not _listening_ ,” he snaps at her, and it’s so uncharacteristic, she turns around. The Jedi does look angry, his face tight though he hasn’t moved from where he sits cross-legged a few steps behind her. “If I’m asking you, it’s for a _reason_.”

”What do you need to ask anything for?” she can’t help shooting back.

He rubs at his forehead, closes his eyes and takes a long, slow inhale. “I think,” he starts evenly, “that things work better when they’re done in...collaboration.”

”So if I say no then--”

”Then we’ll shelve it for the moment,” he says, voice pitching higher in exasperation. “But I never got the sense you really wanted the link either -- which,” he adds quickly, “is a good thing, given that reliance on it leads nowhere good.”

Mara makes a face and goes back to searching for a stone. It's a chain, a cuff.

”Is that what you’d prefer? You want to shelve it for the moment and try without the link later?”

She shrugs as she palms a stone. “Fine. Don’t put it up.”

Mara tosses it.

* * *

Mara skims the crystallographer's notes that afternoon. The records are haphazardly organized and completely centered on kyber crystals, the tone going from scientific to mystical to hysterical at the end. It has a researcher's sensibility, at least in its clearest passages at the beginning. There she finds precise observations with diagrams peppered throughout, tone between speculation and random facts, some of the entries crossed out. Perhaps for the censors? But the notes don't seem more than journal jottings at best. The tone changes to something fragmented and disturbed at the end where Mara comes across entries with appended planetary surveys of disasters in two worlds. Kyber research gone awry, she pieces looking at the holos of charred landscapes. Perhaps the Jedi means for her to conclude this work is _dangerous_.

It doesn't frighten her. Though she doesn't know exactly what she'll do with the crystals, she's certainly not going to be pointing lasers at them. The crystallographer had taken for granted Jedi dealt with the crystals differently, though she hadn't known how. Mara leans back with a breath. _She_ will find out how. The Jedi will show her once she's better.

Mara toggles back, the entries at the beginning, especially, are full of specific terminology she can't understand and observations whose context she can't even guess at. She's seen a lot of it before, has to have, considering all she's read, but nothing _stays_. Frustration inches into her.

It feels like being a waste of resources, no matter how many times the Jedi repeats it's a matter of time, that no memorization is necessary for what he wants. Mara puts the datapad down.

* * *

That night brings the usual routine. Despite her efforts, dread builds up bit by bit. She hates the nightmares, hates waking up thrashing in a cold sweat, wanting to run. Much as she hates conceding anything though, she can't ignore the twistedness of depending on the Jedi's link to settle. _He_ is the reason she’s trembling and pathetic. It's repulsive. The sooner she can deal with it on her own, the better.

She thinks of this as she waits for sleep, tries to let go of those thoughts, imagines herself as transparent...

Mara jolts awake with the echo of a cry in her ears, her heart beating fast. She's curled up tight, her head against her knees. It takes her a few minutes to straighten up, her breaths ragged and sharp in her ears, her sleep tunic drenched in sweat.

She swallows and goes to turn on the light. Her default reaction to it is always the same: seeking out the Jedi outside her door as he always is. The link will make everything go away. But as the last vestiges of terror fade, she realizes what she’s about to do and refrains.

No chain for her tonight, she vows to herself. She's only crippling _herself_. Her middle feels tight again.

Mara sits up. What she sees in the nightmares isn't real, even when it is the Jedi in shadow. The worst _has_ happened. That’s done. Her thoughts whirl. The Jedi won’t hurt her again, she reminds herself to stop the cold dread in her. Not now that the mindlink is gone. There had been a reason for it. He'd needed to remove it to have her carry out his task. There'd been a _reason_. Mara closes her eyes. It hurts right at her sternum, deep enough that she knows it won’t go away. Her master’s seed is gone. There’s no questioning anything there anymore.

Only the task, she reminds herself. A task important enough to rip her from her master, and risk his wrath. To keep her here and prevent her from slitting her throat, from drowning herself. Important enough to help her recover.

A task only she is capable of carrying out.

_It wasn't destroyed with the mindlink. You still have it._

Mara goes back to bed.

She wakes up from another nightmare and can't find sleep again.

* * *

The next night is no different. Neither is the next, though she stops herself from asking for the link. Time and again as soon as sleep pulls her under, nightmares jolt her awake again. Dread claws deeper and deeper into her flesh, anxious tension making it all but impossible to return to sleep, her body straining under the pressure. It starts happening during her naps too.

By mid-morning after the third night, she has to admit defeat. She’s tired to the bone, but incapable of willing her body to rest. 

The Jedi looks on as she goes to the sofa, datapad clutched tight, after she emerges from her room after hours of tossing and turning.

”You’re not having breakfast?”

She grunts out a negative as she looks through the holos of gemstones. Her brain feels too sludge-like to do anything else.

” _Mara_.”

She doesn’t raise her head. “I’m not hungry.”

”We’ve talked about this,” he scolds. “You’re not in any position to be skipping meals.”

”I don’t feel like eating. Not eating one meal isn’t going to kill me.”

”That’s how it starts. All you have to do is eat _something_.”

She ignores him.

”You’re only going to feel worse if you don’t eat.”

Mara searches for another file on her datapad. Holos on birds? Whatever. She opens it. She hears him push back his chair and stand. Any second now, he's going to come bring her the plate and keep insisting.

”It doesn’t even have to be a full mea--”

She shoves off the sofa and goes to her room, slamming the door shut.

The Jedi doesn’t follow her or knock, but, then he doesn’t have to. He’s right there, spying on her mental state, closer than he usually is during the day. She can’t focus on anything with him always there, hovering on the edge of her mind. Rationally she knows she’s tired from the sleepless nights, but more than that, she feels a tight band of heat constricting around her middle.

She storms out of the room, snapping, ”Can you _get out_ of my head already? I’m not going to hurt myself.”

He’s by the compost bin, back to her, but she can easily imagine his drawn expression. ”You already are. Just eat something.”

She makes an incredulous face. “What?”

”Not eating is not going to help you keep up your strength,” he says evenly, closing the lid and straightening up. He flashes her a chiding look before going to wash his hands.

She narrows her eyes at him. “I’m going out to the stream."

He dries his hands and goes to the panel wordlessly. She lets him input the code before she bites out, “Alone.”

His shoulders sag, expression somewhere between resigned and disappointed. “Mara, none of this is going to help.”

”I disagree,” she retorts primly. “I think me going out by myself will be very helpful, _Asher_.”

She catches his flinch, small as it is. “I can’t trust you.”

”You don’t have to worry I’ll put all your hard work to waste,” she growls, and she catches a twitch in his sense, like another flinch. “I promise to come back in one piece to continue learning all about the pretty rocks you want me to categorize.”

He doesn’t reply but moves out of her way, gesturing brusquely to the door. Mara walks out scowling. He’s a few paces behind her _and_ in her head.

At the stream, she grabs a rock and throws it with a hard swing of her arm, mindless of its weight and shape, uncaring whether it skips or not. She grabs another and throws it too.

She feels the Jedi behind her, some steps away, but realizes his presence in her mind is gone. She’s not sure when it happened. 

Now she just feels heavy, and she sits and hugs her knees to her chest. This is all because of last night, this choked feeling in her chest. She’s trapped. Her eyes sting and she wipes them carelessly. She can’t go anywhere. There’s nowhere to go. She doesn't even know where she'd _want_ to go.

Mara sniffs and keeps looking at the stream. ”You’re stupid to worry. It’s not even a river anymore. Can’t drown yourself in two foot deep water.”

The stream trickles on.

Unexpectedly, but very seriously, he murmurs, ”You could trip, fall, hit your head."

If she’s only made of cracked stone now, some of the edges scrape against each other at that. A laugh grinds out of her throat. ”I’m not that clumsy.” 

Mara sniffs. That's a lie. She probably is now. Months without her lessons, months bedridden...her mind’s sludge, nothing hers is working as it was before. Maybe nothing will ever again. And yet, for some reason the Jedi still thinks he can use her now. That _this_ will somehow lead to accomplishing something she couldn’t have before. He'd jumped right after her, betting on that.

Maybe he bet wrong.

Her face pinches and she shuts her eyes tight, wipes at her right cheek.

”You could have...you could have used your powers,” she sniffs again after a moment, hating her watery voice, “kept me from jumping. Or grabbed me...midair.” She doesn’t even know why she says it. Maybe it’s not that different from babbling nonsense. 

But he replies, ”In theory.”

Mara presses her forehead to her knees.

”It would have taken a specific type of … mental state.” A beat and he adds, “Serenity. Focus. Using the Force with any sort of precision demands a measure of control, and...” 

She thinks back to the aftermath of it, to when he’d finally revealed _why_ ; why her. A simple choice remains: she can either complete his task and be free of him. Or nothingness. Her choice.

If she decides to die, the Jedi won’t be able to stop her. Not forever. Eventually, she’d slip past. He’s lucky she hasn’t already. It’s been close. He's had to jump right after her.

Mara draws a shaky breath and closes her eyes, feeling more tears track down. ”I want to sleep tonight."

“Okay,” he replies as he always does. “Okay.”


	16. Chapter 16

  


####  DRY SEASON

  


_Ophelia may have no usable past, but she has an infinite future._ [[x](http://teagrl.tumblr.com/post/178502187547/ophelia-may-have-no-usable-past-but-she-has-an)]

  
  
_Well you're distractingly close to me_  
_And how we work is a mystery_  
_So maybe work is the thing we need_ [[x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ3Wus0jGV0)]  


  


  


##### XV. Modeling and Refinement

  


  


* * *

4.23

[corrupted file up to this point] -- irestorms also reached a nuclear power plant causing a meltdown. The inhabitants threw themselves into a mass exodus to the river at the bounds of the city. The fires continue spreading as does the radiation to this date. No estimates of fatalities. All downplanet comms are down. What could have caused it? Sensor readings of the Hypori site that you asked for are also appended, but that seems different. Turbolasers. I know you mentioned to take precautions, but you too. Think of J--[file corrupted past this point]  


* * *

  


  


”It’s all the rain. The speeder ride over would make me a little nervous. Otherwise we would have come more often.”

”Really?” The Rodian the Jedi is speaking to radiates some surprise. Mara should know his name; it's the same shopkeeper as always, but she can never remember. “This wasn’t even a bad season.” 

”No? I guess I'm not used to it -- I'm from Tatooine." The Jedi chuckles. "Not much rain there.”

The Rodian laughs too, a loud trumpeting sound out his snout. Mara is some paces away, looking at various datacards, barely paying attention to the exchange, save for the fact that she’d been getting a weird feeling from the Jedi. She gets it mostly when he speaks to the locals. Mara doesn’t like it, so she tunes the conversation out, puts more distance between herself and them, riffing through various datacards on display in this section of the general store. Most are collections of holodocs, most are how-to manuals for specific skills, but a select few are guides. She picks up one titled _The Marvelous Underground: An Illustrated Reference of Underground Caves in Keva_ , Keva being the name of Akiva’s largest continent.

Mara gets her datapad from her bag and slides the datacard in to scan over its contents. The holos are impressive. She likes one of a darkened chamber, light refracted from huge blue star-shaped crystals. The name of what they’re made of is at the tip of her tongue, but as usual she can’t grab a hold on it. Mara clicks her datapad off and removes the datacard. She’ll take it.

She raises her head to see the Rodian put his own datapad away, a sign that the Jedi already completed the credits transfer. The workers -- the same Rodian and Duros youths as always -- will be taking their purchases to the speeder. Given that they come to Nialin every two weeks now, she and the Jedi could probably carry everything themselves, but the Jedi’s mentioned it’s part of the customs in the settlement.

Mara would rather do things herself. Now that they come with more regularity, the locals look at them more, some of them even approach, making idle conversation while projecting curiosity. It's uncomfortable, and Mara takes care to lower her head and duck in the shadows, a difficult thing to do when the Jedi’s impulse is the opposite, to meet their eyes and amiably chitchat back. If it goes long enough, he’ll even introduce them, which Mara dreads. She often finds a way to peel herself away with some muttered excuse, and come here, to the general store, or the droid shop at the corner, or even the clothing shop, though that's usually the last option. The storekeeper hasn't tried to make conversation again, but after last time, Mara feels her eyes on her.

”In places like this,” she can't help but remember the Jedi saying, “You stick out more when you’re not friendly.”

But she's not interested in being friendly. If it were up to her they’d go to the general store and leave right after, just as they’d had the first time, but their stays have been lengthening. It's all the Jedi's fault, as usual. There’s a market behind the main thoroughfare, a loud muddy space full of stalls with dull green and blue canopies, that had drawn his eye several visits before. He’d pulled her to it, wanting to go browse.

Mara had managed maybe two steps with him before the cacophony of _feeling_ got overwhelming, and she'd stopped. To many beings, interested, bored, hurried, angry, or happy, and more shades between it all. It was almost dizzying. She just wanted to be as far away from it as possible. The Jedi had given away nothing when he’d turned back and they’d returned to the speeder back at the landing area.

"You okay?" he'd asked back at the speeder, and Mara had opted not to reply. There's no reason to, she'd felt him check up on her, and besides it'd been embarrassing. Since when did _a market_ make her nervous? The stormtroopers had been long gone. She’d been there when the Rodian at the store had brought up how happy he was that the troop had left, that they had scared off his customers, made everyone nervous for nothing. And still, the thought of being at the boisterous space of the market with the Jedi, surrounded by hucksters and all that chaos of beings, stuck beside him while he fed them some story or another made her stomach turn.

Back at the cabin the Jedi has started. "It's probably part of --"

"I'm fine," she'd cut him off, and had gone to her room until dinner.

The next time they’d visited Nialin, the last time, the Jedi had left her at the general store.

”You don’t like the market,” he’d said matter-of-factly, “And there’s a couple of things there I can’t find here. I won’t take long." He'd paused. "You can go to Uya Ta and read there -- might be more comfortable if you don't find anything interesting here.”

Uya Ta was whatever went for a tapcafe about several blocks down the muddy main thoroughfare, the Jedi has dragged her there a couple of times. He chatters inanely with the amphibian-like, four-armed Besalisk attendant about gardening techniques when they go. It's a passion for the Besalisk, who goes on and on about it once you start him up. At least, he only focuses on the Jedi when they go, but that meant he'd be likely to ask her about him if she went alone. No, she definitely doesn't want to go to Uya Ta, she'd thought.

It'd been fine. Mara had stayed unobtrusively by the datacards, hoping to project enough absorption that no local would approach her. Mostly, she succeeded, up until an Ithorian -- she couldn’t tell from the robes if it was male or female -- stared at her for too long, radiating the same curiosity most locals do before asking her in the pidgin Basic spoken here if she'd looked at _Hiking the Boeher Mountains_ holodoc on the display. Mara had seen Ithorians on the Holonet of course, just never from this close. She'd remembered reading they had four throats. 

Mara forgets what she’d replied, but the Jedi had returned not long after. She hadn't known if he bought anything. Later, when she'd been rummaging around the kitchen, she found some weirdly shaped jars with purplish powder in them, another one with an orange powder. The Jedi had been out in the plot, and she’d experimentally opened the orange one, wrinkling her nose at the thick, aromatic smell. A spice of some sort. She’d put it back.

At least he wasn’t using it on her food. It remains as bland as ever.

The Jedi looks on now as she hands the Rodian the datacard and fishes out the credits from her pocket. They’re not her credits. The Jedi gives her a purse of them whenever they come here. She’d never counted the coins, but then again, the only thing she’s cared about getting is datacards. By her rough estimate of the coins she has enough to get more datacards than she'll get through in two weeks. She wouldn't even need them if her datapad had a connection to the Holonet. She's pretty sure the Jedi's got one, but of course they’re not talking about _that_.

This time the Jedi actually headed to the market first, so Mara had hoped they'd just go home, but as they exit the general store, the Jedi says, "Let's go grab something to eat before we go home." Mara plods along reluctantly. She can read while the Jedi and the Besalisk yammer on about their favorite staking techniques for the usan fruit. The Besalisk had thoroughly disapproved of the Jedi's last time.

”I thought you’d get new clothes,” the Jedi nags as they take the path down to Uya Ta.

Mara doesn’t answer. He'd nagged about it last time too, but she couldn't care less about clothes. The ones she’s wearing suit her fine. They’re still big, but at least she no longer needs the belt as tight as before.

* * *

”You’ve been sleeping a good amount of the night,” the Jedi says at dinner several days after the supply run.

Mara shrugs. She supposes it’s true. She asks for the mindlink three times a week, making sure she has days on her own. A couple of weeks ago she’d tried to go through a week without the link and only wound up anxious and on edge, her sleep plagued by the usual nightmares. Unable to focus on the most pedestrian tasks, that cloud of desperation had started following her everywhere. Her appetite had vanished, making every mouthful taste like dust. With this came the Jedi’s increased nagging to eat. The headaches had started not long after. She’s not particularly proud of herself at the tossed bowls, the slammed doors, or most of what’d come out of her mouth at that point. 

Eventually, she’d ended up, like always, at the stream with the Jedi a few steps behind her. Shame battled with revulsion at how pitiful and infantile she'd grown, and looking at the stream, it’d been extra clear where things were heading.

She’d asked for the link again. 

At least, she still hasn't blown out any lights since that first time around a month ago; maybe the meditation is working -- or maybe that part of her has gotten used to the night terrors.

“I’m still not having an easier time with the documents,” Mara finds herself grousing.

”It’ll get better.”

Annoyance makes her pull a face. The Jedi always says that. It’s a tic.

And he does feel strange as he stands to go dispose of his plate. “Where are you at in your reading?”

Mara tries to think back. Nothing comes, as usual, and she pulls her datapad over. “Kyber crystals versus kunda crystals," she says as her eyes scan down. "From the Eardwa teachings.”

She raises her eyes, seeing a fleeting bit of concern in his expression as he watches her.

“It’s fine,” he says in that too-casual tone that never convinces her. “You’re just realigning.”

”It’s been months since I was sick.”

”You’re not sleeping _that_ well, and you still eat the bare minimum.” The defensive note in his voice is new, and worrisome. “You know, maybe you should give the documents a rest. Maybe you’re cramming so much information--”

”I’m not cramming anything,” she protests. “Nothing is _sticking_. I don’t even know how I’ll be able to do this work if--”

”I told you -- you don’t need to memorize--”

She straightens up. ”I should be able to know what I just read, Asher. That’s not normal.”

“Having a mindlink isn’t normal," he replies evenly. "Getting it broken isn’t normal. Neither is the kind of...imbalance that happened after, nor the fever.” His lips tighten into a line. “There is _no_ baseline. None. You need time. That’s all. There’s no shortcut.” 

She feels her face twist. She is _not_ being lazy about anything. “I’m not looking for any shortcuts!”

His expression is tight. “I don’t doubt you think you're seeing the whole picture but --”

An incredulous laugh falls from her. “So this is what? Me imagining things. Me being insane again?”

His frown deepens. ”You do have a tendency to see things in an overly negative--”

Mara’s had enough, pushing off from the table and going to her room, slamming the door as she does. As usual she feels the Jedi in her head, gauging her mental state before he's gone.

It's awful.

She's angry enough to pace up and down her room. She _could_ return to the stream, but the sun's gone down and she hates the glowing bugs outside. She certainly doesn't feel like reading, and after a while of looking at holos of rock formations, she decides that's not what she wants either.

Mara opts for the 'fresher. She turns the water on scaldingly hot, lets it fill the tub and settles in.

She does this now, even if her hair is still too much hassle to wash herself. She really should mention hacking it off, but she forgets. If she had scissors, she would do it right now, but she probably won't see a proper tool in the next four years. Every request will have to go through the Jedi.

Mara leans back, blows out a breath and closes her eyes. Four years.

The knock comes like clockwork. The Jedi dislikes her taking long baths and often finds excuses to interrupt her, all with a stupidly averted gaze as if her nudity is somehow shocking even after all the cleaning up he's done after her.

“You okay in there?” he calls through the door.

Mara keep her eyes closed. He'd been in her head the second the door slammed like always, and besides, there's still no mirror. No reason to make a big to-do.

Another knock. “Mara.”

Nag, nag, nag.

The snappish tone contrasts with the tentative way the door opens. “Why is it so hard to just _answer_?”

She doesn’t open her eyes. “What do you want?”

He's silent for a second. “If you think there's something... wrong. We can...see someone.” 

She opens her eyes. “See someone?”

The Jedi is by the door, his head turned towards the sink like the he's holding an involved conversation with the basin. “A physician. Request neural imaging.”

She sucks in a breath and he says quickly, his gaze finding her before veering back to the sink, “It's nothing. There is no baseline and even -- even medical personnel wouldn't be able to -- to grasp what happened to you. Nothing’s going to show--”

“Then why go through the trouble?”

“I don't think you're insane.”

Mara feels her face scrunch. It sounds like a nonsequitor to her. She tries to get a better read, but he's too blank, so she offers a guess, “You think there's something wrong.”

“ _No_ ,” he snaps, gaze jerking back to her before it swoops down to the sink again, like it's the target of his annoyance. She’d laugh if it were any other situation. “ _I don't_. I don't think we need to see anyone. But if _you_ do, fine. Is that what you want?”

Her brain can't fully wrap around the statement. It still doesn’t answer why he would go through all that trouble.

He huffs. “Collaboration, Mara," he tells the sink. "Shouldn't be that hard. Before that, there are also strategies to try. We can be structured about it. You might see results and that'll be the end of it.”

She rolls her eyes. ”Don’t see why you need all that.”

“You’re no good to me paranoid like this.”

It feels like when he'd talked to the Rodian about rain making him nervous when she'd never _once_ felt him that way in the speeder. In fact, she's pretty sure he likes _everything_ about getting in the blasted airspeeder, and zipping off to Nialin, even if there were the downpour to end all downpours. She barks out a sharp laugh, straightening up, water sloshing around. Him calling _her_ paranoid is absurd, and he knows it.

“You’re one to talk!" She jabs her forefinger in his direction. " _I’m_ not the one barging into someone’s ‘fresher while they’re bathing to have an argument."

The Jedi looks up, but he doesn’t just blush, his _whole face_ turns scarlet. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, dismay now joining irritation in his very, very red face, before he jerks his gaze away.

He hisses, “This is _not_ an argument,” and exits, closing the door firmly behind him.

* * *

The work starts the next morning as she’s grabbing some of the flatbread from the center of the table -- the sweetened variety the Jedi sometimes makes for breakfast.

”There are strategies to improve memory,” he announces from the table, slathering completely unnecessary jam onto the bread. It’s more than sweet enough -- she often has it with cheese to balance it out. “We’ll work through them and see what you take to best. I mean it when I say collaborative.” He looks at her sternly. “Clearly, self study isn’t giving you the results you want,” the truth in his statement smarts, “so a cooperative approach might be something to try.”

Mara purses her lips and darts her eyes to the windows, avoiding his gaze.

”I don’t need to repeat all that’s happened to you since you came her, do I?” he says flatly. “This is not a judgement of your aptitude. It’s a realistic assessment of the current situation.”

That’s where he’s wrong, it _is_ a judgment on her current aptitude, and an accurate one. She used to be a quick study, sharp and smart. Now she can’t even retain a few paragraphs of information on damn rocks. There is no guarantee she will ever get that ability back.

She pulls her mug of tea towards her.

”What I said still stands, dealing with the crystals will be primarily affective, but it still relies on the Force, specifically a productive channeling of it. Your disposition matters, and if you’re concerned and anxious about anything, you will be of no use to me.”

Last night flits into her head. If she’s anxious, it’s not just _her_. For some reason, she debates mentioning it, but since when does she care?

”It’s not just me,” she says pointedly. “If we're talking about paranoia.”

”It’s not paranoia. It's concern," he shoots back, expression serious, but just a bit defensive. "I’m invested in your success.”

That _is_ true. Mara takes a sip of her tea. "All right.”

* * *

They end up going over the documents together. Mostly the Jedi has her read, then relate the information in her own words. After, he has her link what she’d just summarized to something else. Every time they go over new material, he asks her to repeat the main points of the previous section before she takes on the new files under the same system. Sometimes he even asks her to diagram what she's gone through. A headache while they're going over the material isn't rare, and while she tries to power through, the Jedi can tell, and signals an end. It doesn't feel like enough work when he does that. Mara had complained until they 'd settled on brief periods of study several times a day. 

It’s still slow going. Mara can’t really tell if it’s working a week in.

The Jedi never quizzes her about her readings outright, so she makes herself ask him, just to see if his answers will be as she thinks. She’s perched on the stairs of the veranda, tracing geometric shapes on the graphics program while the Jedi is weeding, when she begins with a simple question. 

“Where are most of the lightsaber crystals found?”

Part of her expects the kind of reply she would make, or have gotten long ago. Your document should tell you this. Read more carefully next time.

She's not thinking about that.

Another thought flits through her mind. Maybe the Jedi's already bored of all the documents and won't want her to bring them up unless they’re actively working through the texts. If so, he can just tell her to be quiet.

From her peripheral vision she sees the Jedi startle, but she doesn’t look up from her screen. 

“Ilum mainly,” he answers after a moment. She gets a strange sense about him, as if he’s pleased. She can feel him staring at her. His tone too stays casual, “Then Dantooine. Kadril too.”

She got Ilum. Only that.

The Jedi goes back to his weeding, and Mara writes Dantoine and Kadril in her graphics program over and over and over.

When she tires of that, she pulls up the file with her notes. According to the documents, the majority of kyber crystals in circulation during antiquity came from the ice planet Ilum. When the first expeditions found the caves full of glittering jewels, bright as a beacon through the Force, they reported back to their High Council of their discoveries, mapping a route that only a trained Jedi could follow.

They didn’t tell the Galactic Senate, instead they deleted all the records of Ilum’s existence from all reports.

And so it remained their secret for thousands of years.

Mara looks up to where the Jedi is now mulching the area he'd weeded. They hid it from the Senate; they hid it so that no one but them could have access to the crystals.

She remembers still, what was told about Jedi. They’d take children from their parents to grow their numbers.

They'd anointed themselves as judge, jury, and executioner. 

_It was a group of them sent to ambush me._

Mara takes a shaky breath, pushing the memory aside. Only that in the end, for all their machinations, they were weak. Weak enough to be exterminated almost completely, and now this lone Jedi has to hide like a scared animal.

Ticks in grasses. She thinks of the red gashes on her arms and legs. The black mass of them in the bathtub when she rinsed herself off.

A traitor nestled in the court. Had they--

That doesn’t concern her anymore, she thinks over the blooming pain in her chest. All of it is irrelevant. Dead. 

* * *

A few days later it's time for another supply run. When they come to the landing area where they usually leave the speeder, it’s at capacity, and they’re directed to a more distant field.

”White Week,” the Duros worker who takes the Jedi’s credits chirps, his excitement, somewhat tamped down by his annoyance. Mara pieces he'd rather not be here.

The Jedi’s eyebrows go up. “Already?”

The Duros worker nods. Mara feels the Jedi's attention on her as they wind their way back to the main thoroughfare. There's a feeling in the air, an intensity that was absent the past times they came, but without the apprehension of their first visit, almost...excitement? Has to be the festival. The press of all that anticipation is a little uncomfortable, but Mara draws her attention elsewhere.

She tries to think back, and a couple of details from what she read ages ago surface. White Week officially inaugurates the dry season, and a big part of it is wearing white -- something about cleanliness and the commencement of a new season. The festivities officially open with a fireworks display during the first evening.

Center, the main business district of Nialin, where they do their supply runs, has transformed into a sea of white. Well, off-white, Mara thinks, nothing quite gets the dirt off here. All that white’s not limited to the locals’ tunics; the storefronts have white banners, all the landspeeders she sees have absurd little white flags somewhere, even the mounts and some of the livestock have some sort of white saddle cloth.

She and the Jedi haven’t even reached the general store when a voice calls out, “Sunwhite!”

Mara’s heart sinks as the Jedi turns around.

The voice belongs to a green-skinned Devaronian male Mara hasn’t seen before. He touches his forehead in an offhand manner right between the horns, a gesture Mara has seen before, a common greeting around these parts. She figures he’s probably someone the Jedi has bought items from before.

”Slan,” the Jedi says, copying the gesture a bit awkwardly. “I was meaning to pass by, I didn’t know if you’d be doing business.”

The Devaronian smiles, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth. Mara remembers a tutor calling them devils and pushes the thought away. “Not today. Too much to do before Lights tonight.”

The Jedi nods good-naturedly. “I thought so. Enjoying the festivities?”

"Ach, I will enjoy them more once all this busywork is done." He shakes his head, but his expression clears as he changes the subject. "I may not be working there, but Liva _is_ open you should still come by -- there’s some people you should meet.”

The Jedi’s eyes flicker to her. The Devaronian notices, and again there's that curiosity. Mara stiffens as he asks, “This is your cousin?”

It’s all she can do not to turn on her heel and walk off.

”Yes, Mara,” the Jedi introduces her when she says nothing, and turns to her. “This is Slan Velex; he owns the Liva Cantina at the end of the market.”

She gets the sense that the Jedi is waiting for her to say something, but she’s drawing a blank at the Devaronian’s scrutiny. It’s difficult enough to stay still as he looks at her though all he feels is curious. That's how _all_ the locals feel. She should be used to it by now.

It still gets to her.

Another clumsy pause later, the Jedi adds, “Mara’s not fond of the market.”

”Really?” The Devaronian’s tone is wry. “I need to wrench my useless son from it with a prybar. All he does is waste time and credits there with his friends.”

The Jedi smiles, a weird nostalgic cast to it. “Leven is younger than Mara, isn't he?”

The Devaronian grunts. “There is hope, yes. But come to Liva,” he returns brusquely but not unkindly. "I expect Kosta and Junya will be there until noon. It would help to put a face to words. I've told them about you.”

From a distance, someone calls Devaronian's name.

”Of course,” the Jedi says quickly as the Devaronian looks in the call’s direction. “I appreciate it.”

“We will talk later,” he replies distractedly as he peels away and into the crowd.

Mara turns and walks into the general store beside the Jedi, her stomach churning. She doesn’t want to think about whatever the Jedi is doing or whoever he’s talking to. She wants to buy whatever it is they need and go back without talking to anyone else. It’s bad enough having to deal with the Rodian storekeeper who greets the Jedi and her. It’s all a charade, a voice inside her screams, being here is a sham for both of them. All that curiosity only reminds her of that. Mara ducks into the section with the datacards.

"Mara." She stops not at the Jedi's call, but at his hand at her elbow. "I've been calling you. Here." He pulls out her pouch of credits and hands it to her. "You left this on the table at home."

Mara looks at it feeling that old wave of embarrassment. This is the third time, and she remembers telling herself _not_ to forget it.

"It's my fault. I should have given you the credits last night so you could slip it into your bag then, not this morning in the rush."

There was no rush in the morning, she thinks, but lets the thought go.

"Anyway," he goes on. "I should go find Slan and see about those introductions. You'll be here?" 

Of course she will, where else would she go? Mara nods and the Jedi goes off. She finds herself scoffing at the thought of the Jedi at the cantina of all places; those are grimy hideaways for mercenaries and criminals. The Jedi is...well, a Jedi. A criminal to be sure, just not that kind of unwashed sort. 

The Jedi doesn’t take long, and soon they’re on their way back. In the speeder, a headache settles, Mara rubs at her temples, vaguely irritated when she catches the Jedi looking at her. She hates when he catches her. After they’re finished unloading, she heads to the stream with him behind her, hears him sit while she searches for a stone.

"Hey," he starts, and she just _knows_ he's going to mention her being on edge. "I know it can be overwhelming, especially now that your abilities make you more receptive." Her stomach sinks. "There are ways--" 

“Are kyber crystals sentient?” Mara interrupts loudly as she lets her fingers open forcefully. It's a slow tolerable throb in her head, not too bad. She focuses on her stone; it skips twice, making a _slat-slat_ sound before it plunks.

She feels the Jedi hesitate, clearly wanting to go on. There's a flicker of resignation, and Mara relaxes. They're not going to talk about how defective she is. Good. She turns her mind to the question. They'd just gone over that section this morning.

The sentience of kybers is a matter of some discussion in the documents, she recalls. She and the Jedi had gone over it last night too. Some researchers think they have something like a hive mind. Others think that idea comes from the relationship Force users have to their crystals -- that it’s more symbolic than literal.

“Not sure,” the Jedi says from where he sits. “Some Jedi thought so, but others thought that idea came from the echo of their own Force presence within the crystal.”

Mara decides it’s close enough. She searches for another rock.

“Echo?” She's annoyed she couldn't follow the explanation there, and weighs another candidate for throwing. It’s light; she can’t toss it too hard.

“Has to do with the technique to attune yourself to the blade. The meditation through which you create a link to it. Some think that link is to another consciousness, that the crystal is sentient.”

Mara tosses the stone. It skips once, then plunks. She frowns at it. Should have thrown it harder.

“Some think that link is so powerful that there’s a...a spillover, I guess. So what you think is another consciousness is just...your own presence bounced back to you through the Force.”

Mara stops to parse the explanation. It’s confusing.

“Like a mirror.” He’s wincing a little once she looks at him. “It’s not the best analogy. A...conductor might be a better one.”

She begins looking for another stone.

“I’m not sure myself.” There’s a longish pause. “Mine wasn’t a kyber crystal. It was a synthetic -- have you gotten to those yet?”

Mara shakes her head. She'd skipped those sections. Synthetics are fakes. She'll loop back to them later. She finds another light stone. 

Her crystal was--

_No._

“A synthetic would definitely be that...conductor bouncing your Force presence back at you. But a real crystal...I’ve handled them, but not long enough to figure things out one way or another -- and it's just been me. Even the Jedi Order was limited in their understanding of them. They consigned them only for use in lightsabers." 

"And non Force sensitives like in the notes, what they'd make of them?"

It might be an obvious question, but the Jedi betrays no exasperation. "They understood kyber crystals even less. Both Jedi and those scientists thought of kybers as weapons in the end. Even if Jedi conceived of a kyber as the heart of a blade for defense, a blade is still a blade."

Her headache's gone, Mara realizes. "So what do you think they are then?" asks after a beat.

He looks at her with an expression she can't read. "You'll tell me."

She turns to the whispering stream and lets the stone fly. Three skips.

* * *

Several days later Mara wakes up early. It's laundry day so she separates her dirty clothing into the bins, walks out with them in hand. The Jedi’s settling down for meditation in the living room by the windows.

He looks up at her. "You're up early. I haven't gotten breakfast on."

Mara shakes her head. "I can wait. I just loaded the bins. I'll get them down and get the cycle started while you finish here."

He shrugs. “Or I can do it later.”

Mara makes a face. “I’ve watched you load the laundry unit a billion times. It’s easier than composting. I should do it myself.”

"All right." The Jedi nods. He goes to stand and gets her datapad on the table. When he hands it to her she sees he just wrote a simple set of instructions. Mara frowns, that same undercurrent of shame twisting her insides, she used to be --

“It’s just to double check, if you feel like it,” he tells her, already turning to go back to his spot.

Mara slips her datapad inside the bin to hit the door release with her free hand. It’s only locked at night as far as she knows. She takes the veranda stairs down to the basement where the washer is. She’s been there a couple of times with the Jedi, getting some provisions or rarely used garden tools. It’s not locked either since the Jedi's probably going to spend most of it going up and down to make sure everything's washed-- he really should have had the washer installed in the cabin proper or gotten a laundry droid to do everything like a civilized sentient. 

The machine is off to the side of the medium sized crate-filled room, and she stuffs both bins into it. Droids were invented precisely so humans wouldn't have to do this. With a reluctant sigh, she goes over the instructions the Jedi had scribbled down in his blocky scrawl. It’s simple and she’s done in seconds, about to leave the room, but a glance at the crates makes her stop.

She brings a hand to the halo braid around her head. The whole business of washing, drying, and braiding her hair had taken over an hour yesterday, not least because the Jedi also received a couple of comms he had to attend to -- something that was unprecedented. It had the ring of a business transaction though, so Mara figured he was probably selling something -- to that Devaronian from last time, perhaps the speeder for a newer model? She’s not sure. The Jedi didn’t feel any different, and he wasn’t trying to conceal it, so whatever it was just meant that the whole grooming process had been drawn out unnecessarily. It's even more of a hassle these days, and for nothing.

She thought for sure he’d finally suggest she have it cut already. Maybe during their next time at Nialin. She’s already dreading having to put up with the chatter and curiosity of whoever will do it. Maybe she’ll be forced to spin some story of who she is and what she's doing in this mudball. Or worse, she'd have to sit there while the Jedi spins a story for her.

It would be easier to just cut it herself.

But there are no sharp tools anywhere upstairs. They _have_ to be here in a crate somewhere. Mara tries one dusty crate and finds a set of all sorts of batteries, in another she finds circuit boards and wires, wire mesh for the plot, caging material for the usan fruit. She even finds dried comestibles in a crate near the back and more toiletries and household goods in a closed crate, which opens after she just hits an automated lock release. There seems to be everything - except a pair of scissors.

Mara grunts out her frustration as she bends to dig through another crate with fertilizer and one with pots and other gardening supplies. No pruning shears. They have to be here somewhere, she thinks, pushing aside crate after crate. The floor is too dusty, she should remember to tell the Jedi to bring the cleaning droid down, though realistically she doubts she will. Something falls to the floor with a heavy metallic clang, then seems to roll a few paces, slowing down gradually.

With a huff, she straightens up to see what fell. 

A cylindrical object.

Her heart stalls in her chest as she regards the object glimmering on the floor, slowing down further and further until it stops.

It’s her lightsaber.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for hanging on. I had hopes for posting my last Halloween Challenge fic before coming back to the next part of this fic, but alas the Halloween fic is turning to be a bear to edit. I'm past late on this, so here's the next part as an apology, consider it proof that this fic has NOT been abandoned (my soul aches to think the lag might led anyone to think that!).

##### XVI. Water of the Kyber

  


  


* * *

5.7

  
G. grows distant from me and part of me welcomes it. ~~It's collusion in blood knowledge. I cannot stop thinking of the dead at Malpaz and Hypori. They wouldn't care that we were duped. We know what we've been part of. Have we always known?~~ J. looks at me and it feels like the worst kind of cowardice to forget the lies we tell ourselves, the lies between us.

* * *

~~~~

  


  


For a long time Mara just stares at the lightsaber on the ground. It rolls away, stopping a few paces from her, at the base of some crates.

_One that hasn’t been seen for thousands of years._

It shouldn't be here, is all she can think. It's gone. It's gone.

_What did you let him do to your gift?_

It's gone. Just like her.

Her spine goes rigid when she feels the Jedi's presence in her mind, looks up to find him staring at her from the doorway, several crates between them. He couldn't have seen the lightsaber from where he is, but he's obviously read it from her mind from the sharply anxious feel of him. 

”Mara?” he calls softly.

She squeezes her eyes tight and turns her head, dread dull and heavy at the pit of her stomach. He shouldn't have shown up either.

She would have left it, and gone up the veranda steps as if none the wiser. It would be gone. In her mind, it'd be gone. She didn't see it. It hadn't been there.

The Jedi's presence is cloying in her mind.

“Stop that,” Mara whispers. She should have never looked through the crates. She’d mourned the lightsaber. Given it up for dead. It'd melted to nothing in the fire that consumed the wreck of her ship.

Why couldn’t things just _stay_ dead?

“Mara--” The Jedi's presence is still in her head and she clenches her jaw. He did it. _Everything_ is his fault.

“I told you to stop that." She jerks into movement, stumbling through the path of crates until she can shoulder past him, exiting the basement, and going up the veranda stairs back to the cabin.

He follows her, footsteps thumping behind her. “You know why I can’t.”

Mara continues to her room, raising her voice, “I’m not going to hurt myself, Asher.” She throws the door back, but it doesn't slam and she turns around to see him at the threshold, holding it open. “So you can get out already. Get out of here, and get out of my head.”

He extends a hand in appeal and suddenly it’s like before, him _wanting_ , entreating her to understand. “I couldn’t just give you a weapon.”

She turns away. She understands just fine. He had it from the beginning. He'd taken it from her ship’s wreck. Mara paces to one side of the room, then the other. He'd stolen it.

"I always meant to give it back to you once you were better." 

The sound of his voice grates. How could she have forgotten? How could any of this have become _normal_?

She’d asked for the link. Not once. _Every_ night. For _months_. From him. He'd taken everything from her, and she'd asked for the link.

Mara breathes in. Because she's defective. Because of what he did. It's all his fault.

“You know what? Nevermind. Take it.” She’s happy she can gesture to the lightsaber in his hand. Of course he has it now. He wouldn’t want to have a _weapon_ lying around where she could take it in hand, turn it on herself, and put all his work to waste. And she understands now why she would. It's crystal clear. “Why not? You've taken everything else.”

A flash of something too quick for her to read, and he turns the hand holding the hilt up, and opens his palm. The lightsaber hilt hovers for a few seconds above it, then the hilt quickly disassembles with several successive clicks.

Startled, Mara jerks back.

As the components draw themselves away, they reveal a crystal. It lights up with a magenta glow that reminds her vaguely of the luminescent jungle floor. 

“It’s a synthetic,” the Jedi says quietly. “Grown from a starter. Did you grow it? Or was it given to you as a crystal?” He pauses. “It doesn't feel like you at all.”

Pain blossoms behind her rib cage over the smoldering rage, and Mara whirls, climbs into the bed with her shoes on, curling on her side, facing away from him. What the fuck does he know? He knows nothing. Nothing.

“I wanted to keep it for you. Return it to you when you were better. Its crystal has some...unpleasant echoes. I could -- I could help you clean it. Teach you how to really make it your own.”

Mara clenches her hands into fists, pulling them close to her body. Why is he even here? Any other time, if she were being difficult -- like that week she'd been without the mindlink -- he'd leave her alone as long as she ate. He’s scared she’ll backslide, that he’ll have invested all his time and resources for nothing.

She wants to deprive him of that, but she knows it's not enough. Rage alone doesn't push her to cross the threshold she's crossed twice.

”It belongs to you. I was only holding on to it--”

“ _Keeping_ it for me." She keeps her eyes on the wall. “Doing me the _favor_. Like you told me _the truth_. Like you meant me no harm.” She forces out a laugh. "I’m not going to try to kill myself again. I’m going to do that job you want me to do, and when that’s over, I’ll do whatever other job--”

“There is no other job. I mean--”

She laughs again, makes it garrulous. “Whatever you say, Asher Sunwhite," she singsongs after. "Asher Sunwhite, you won it all. You want the lightsaber. Keep it. You want someone to classify crystals for you. Fine. You want a warm bo--”

“Stop it,” he snaps.

It’s surprising enough to jar her. She scrambles up, turning to look at him because he doesn't get to tell her to stop. He _never_ gets to tell her to stop.

The Jedi raises his hands in his usual conciliatory gesture. “Look, I know that--”

She narrows her eyes at him, leans forward, enunciating, “A warm _body_ to talk to your blasted rocks? Filthy thief. Liar."

It’s like finding a fissure, a crack, even as he tries to spackle it over with a pretense of calm. 

"A Jedi among Jedi," she continues, because she sees a hairline crack, and she wants to chip, chip at that. "They're all gone, but at least there's you. Truly the very best of your kind. How lucky I am to be shackled to you.”

"Mara, I told you--” 

"I don't want it," she grits out between clenched teeth. "It's a Force-damned fucking fake like you."

His eyes widen. 

“You make me sick. Get the fuck out." She turns away to curl on her side and manages to level her voice from that pathetic whisper. "Fucking get out."

Wordlessly, he does.

The rest of the night passes fitfully. She tosses, and sleep becomes an impossibility. The Jedi lurks too close in her perceptions. She knows he’s spying on her state, waiting for an excuse to sedate her again, dull her into that artificial, convenient sense of well-being. She’s definitely not asking for the link now. Not ever again. 

When dawn comes, she’s badly rested, but she’s herself. It feels like a very small victory.

Those are all she can get now. 

Creeping out of her room, Mara finds her breakfast on the table and the Jedi elsewhere, probably working on the plot. She can feel him at the horizon of her awareness. 

But at least he's gone, and there's silence. The memory of her lightsaber still aches, a hollow pain behind her ribs. Liar.

Mara eats all she can, throws out her plate, and goes to the room. She can’t bring herself to pull up files on kyber crystals, so she opens up the graphics program and draws geometric figure after geometric figure. That dank, despairing feeling returns, saturates everything, and she settles back on the bed. That feeling is more dangerous than the rage. 

After a while, she even tries meditating. These days the routine incorporates the stream. She imagines it to the last detail, bring it from _out there_ to _in here_ as the Jedi put it. She can’t make it work now. The whole exercise is too fraught, too bound up with the Jedi. Liar. Thieving scum.

Lying thief.

The thought of him motivates her to push herself up. She’s still wearing her sleep tunic as she walks out, past the veranda. She knows the second the Jedi appears behind her, following her footsteps. It would give her deja-vu if it were night, but it’s the afternoon. The embankment is as sunny as ever when they come. She just wants to sit there and throw stones until her mind feels less foggy, until that feeling of utter meaninglessness ebbs out.

Mara sits down on one of the smooth boulders by the stream, grabs one rock and throws it, mindless of its weight and shape. She grabs another and flings it too, focusing on the plunking sound breaking the whisper of the water. She doesn’t know when, but the fogginess moves back a little. Her arm’s tired, and she pauses to stare at the untamed mass of vegetation beyond the water. She looks up, but she can’t see the sun through the canopy. It must be later. 

She feels the Jedi behind her some steps away, but realizes his presence in her mind is gone. She’s not sure when it happened. 

His feet make shuffling sounds on the ground as he approaches. 

“It’s getting late,” he tells her as if this had been an outing at the stream like any other, but there’s a heavy feeling under his words. And why? Why the entreaties? As if he doesn't want to be loathed, as if it scrapes at him. Absurd, and she wonders if she can't be like the river, wearing down rock ever so slowly, until it crumbles into nothing at all. Would that suffice?

Four endless years, and what then?

“We should head back,” he says.

Mara stands up and follows him back to the cabin.

* * *

She doesn't ask for the link again after that. 

For his part, the Jedi spies less on her mental state. Neither mention the lightsaber again. The nightmares continue, but with less regularity than before. Bad nights mean chaotic sleep the next day, but after months of this, Mara knows what to expect. She still eats less than the Jedi would like. That’s not likely to change regardless of his nagging. 

Her memory isn't improving and the market never fails to raise her hackles. Mara tries not to think of either. She's stopped mentioning it.

One morning right as they're finishing up with the morning's material the Jedi blurts out, "Why do you dislike the market?"

The question catches Mara by surprise, but she plays it off, shifts a bit, and occupies herself with closing up files. She might not have hidden her reluctance to go, but that doesn't mean it's up for discussion. 

"If it's preference, that's one thing. But...is it uncomfortable? In your mind. Pressure? Too much from everyone around you?"

Mara doesn't answer. He'll drop it the way he has before. If it's not essential they don't need to go over it.

"We talked about your abilities manifesting, this could be the same thing. It's not anything you should feel bad about."

She shuts off her datapad's screen.

He sighs. "Things don't just go away because you refuse to talk about them."

The memory issues are bad enough. There's no need to discuss her abilities. it's not like there's a crystal on hand anyway. They can deal with that when the need arises.

"I know you're still upset, but this is different."

Upset. As if the fact he'd stolen her lightsaber was an annoying detail. Mara refuses to look up.

"If you actually _talked_ , you might find that there are options, solutions."

Like with her memory, Mara thinks bitterly, eyes still on her datapad's darkened screen. Right. Except that nothing feels like a _solution_ as much as haphazard troubleshooting to obviate the fact that she doesn't function the way she used to, that she doesn’t work right anymore. A workaround over the gaping holes in her head. Holes _he_ made.

The Jedi makes a soft exasperated sound. "It's a good thing that you're more receptive to your surroundings, but if it's too much then it's an indicator we should work on establishing barriers, sectioning your mental space so that others' states won't affect you as much."

He's an idiot for bringing it up.

"Mara," his voice thins to a nag as she stands from the table. "It's something that will only help --"

She goes into her room and slams the door shut.

It's when she goes to sit on her bed that she realizes she left her datapad outside.

She opts to go without it.

* * *

The next supply run happens about a week after. As they are setting down at the landing area, the Jedi says, "We need to get started on mental shielding techniques."

Mara goes rigid in her seat.

"You don't want to talk about it, fine," he says tersely as he goes through the shut down sequence. "But it's a problem and an obvious one, so you're going to deal with it." He undoes his crashwebbing and takes off his headset. "You already have the basic tools for it. Anyone can meditate, but Force users build upon the basis established through a focused mind. In time you won't need meditation to center yourself, but for now it's a helpful first step. I'd like you to run through a meditation cycle -- you won't be helping yourself feeling like," he waves a hand in her general direction, "this."

"What? Now?" Mara feels her brows draw together as she undoes her own crashwebbing. He can't be serious. "What are you talking about? We're already here."

His reply is a curt, "Yes. Rile yourself up more, and you'll have to work harder getting yourself back to center."

She looks at him in outrage. "You're just _throwing_ this at me!"

"Which is in itself a good learning opportunity. We don't always get to choose the problems that come up. Only our approaches to them. Besides, if here is where you're feeling bombarded, then this is where the exercise should take place."

She sets her jaw. "It's not going to work."

"Not right away, so the quicker you start practicing the better. This here matters more than all the reading you've been doing. The meditation cycle." He crosses his arms over his chest.

Mara shoots him a glare. He can't just _spring_ this on her. The Jedi doesn't react, and Mara just knows they're going to stay right here until she complies. Worse, that if it goes long enough, the workers are going to show up inquiring if they're having a speeder issue. It'd be a big embarrassing fuss.

The thought makes her scowl darken further, but there's something familiar about the push to sink or swim she doesn't want to ponder. In fact, it's easier to just go ahead and meditate than think about _that_ , so Mara closes her eyes. It's weird to meditate in the speeder, of all places, and under the Jedi's eye. It takes her about twice as long to really resync herself.

A while later she draws out of it and the Jedi nods. "You have your center, now it's a matter of stepping into it whenever you feel overwhelmed."

"I do that already," she can't help but snap. Some Jedi insight. 

The Jedi flashes her a skeptical look. "There's texts that describe how we approach the world around us in terms of rings.” He raises a hand, disclaiming, “I’m oversimplifying -- but there’s an outward ring," he flips a thumb up, "which is nearly all projective," he flips his index finger up, "and a middle ring, which is receptive."

She props her head on her hand, waiting for him to be done so they can get this supply run over with, taps her other impatiently on her lap. 

He ignores her, waving the two fingers. "You feel like you spend your time smashballing between the two."

That garners a disgruntled look. It's a stupid analogy.

"Your center's the third ring." The Jedi finally climbs out of his seat and opens the hatch. Mara does the same on her side to jump out and join him at the front of the speeder. "Returning to it _grounds_ you, so that instead of either projecting your feelings or receiving everyone else's, you learn to _be_ separately. Do that and others' emotional states will flow past you -- like...one of those boulders inside the river bed. The current doesn’t toss them about." He's finished the lock up procedure and heads toward the front where the workers are.

"I don’t get tossed about." 

"No. Not generally, because you avoid anything where that might happen."

"I'm _not_ avoiding the market or--" She stops as some workers come up to them. The Jedi pays and she goes on in a low growl as they leave the landing area, "I'm not avoiding _anything_. I just don't like the market. You're wrong. It's not a _problem_."

"That's good," he replies noncommittally, "Because the market is a great opportunity for practice." 

* * *

It's not quite a disaster.

The thick wave of feelings she gets from the crowd makes her head feel overfull, and she gets a brain-wracking headache within the first three minutes of stepping into the market. She makes it one minute pretending that nothing is wrong before shaking her head at the Jedi and tracing her steps back out. She knows he's looking at her. At least he's not in her head.

But the throbbing in her head makes her reluctant to go to any of the usual places along the main thoroughfare. She slinks off into an alleyway and just walks for a while until there's fewer beings around. She looks to her side where a squat white dome with a small tiered tower takes up most of her view. From the maps she's consulted, she recognizes it as an Ahia-ko shrine, the Ahia-ko being a species that lived in Akiva so long ago that no one even knows what they looked like. 

Mara thinks back. Myths paint them as guardians of the planet's water reservoirs or something along those lines, and they are still worshiped as such by some local religious factions. There's enough in the Jedi documents she's read to suggest they were Force-sensitive and may have protected the kybers. The Ahia-ko haven't been sighted in centuries, but that’s not to say they haven’t moved into less inhabited parts of the continent. Like most Outer Rim nowheres, Akiva's population is far less than what the planet holds. There's plenty of unclaimed land.

Through the closed gate she can see varied arrangements of flowers around the shrine. She's not sure if there's some connection to the past White Week or if that's normal. She's never been to this part of Center.

By then, luckily, the headache is near gone. Mara rubs at her temples.

Naturally, that's when the Jedi shows up. He might not be in her head, but she hates the feeling she picks up from him whenever he catches her having a headache or rubbing at her forehead. It's several notches above his usual concern, sharper somehow these days. Maybe she's more sensitive, she can't be sure.

As he approaches, his expression remains closed off. She knows he probably won't mention that she didn't do well. He doesn't have to.

Just because it's his fault she's defective doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

After about a minute, Mara blurts out, "Did I forget something?" 

"No," he says, squinting at the sun blaring down. "But it's past noon. Let's go get something to eat."


	18. Chapter 18

##### XVII. Piezoelectric Effect

  


  


* * *

5.13

If there’s a price to be paid for folly and hubris, then it must be paid in full. I fear for --  


* * *

  


  


The next few trips go like that without much progress. Walking into the market always calls up a headache, no matter how much she tries to barricade herself in her center. She ends up losing her focus and being flooded by the dissonance of so many mental states. It's around the third or fourth attempt when she discovers that the headache lowers in intensity the longer she stays, but by then she's so worn down she'd still rather leave. She never makes it more than ten minutes.

Mara takes to exploring the solitary minor streets that spiderweb out of the busy market area. She gets lost every time, the facades of the buildings eternally half-remembered, but while her predicament carries consternation, it never really grows to full on panic. It's a matter of waiting, turning her head to see the Jedi take shape from one of the alleyways or side streets, if not there, behind her like her own shadow.

He might not be in her head anymore, but he never has trouble finding her.

* * *

“Dinner's done," the Jedi says as soon as he senses her come into the kitchen. They're fully in the dry season, the name laughable because it still rains, just not every day for hours like it used to.

The Jedi lowers the heat on the stove. “You know you could try responding when I call so I know you heard me.” 

“You knew I was bathing," she retorts grabbing a seat. "Doesn’t kill you to wait until I’m done.”

”You take hours.” The Jedi turns in her direction and frowns at her bun. “I thought you were washing your hair.”

Mara rolls her eyes. She _does_ wash her own hair now, just not often enough for the Jedi’s liking. He hasn’t offered to do it for her again since she started, but he nags and nags and nags so much eventually she does it just so he’ll finally shut up.

“How can someone spend hours in the bathtub and not wash their hair?” he grumbles half to himself, turning back to the pot.

“I can cut it if it offends your sensibilities that much.” Mara suspects they both know she’s up to handling tools, but the Jedi’s paranoia rears up in moments like this. The length of her hair is annoying given that washing it entails drying it too. She pulls it into a messy braid or bun after, wanting to forget about it as soon as possible.

“Even if it were short.” He’s getting that nasal inflection that signals a nag. “You'd still have to wash it more than once every three weeks.”

She pulls a face as she drops into the chair. She’d rather be going over the material, doing chores, or anything other than dealing with her appearance. Even when they go on their supply trips none of those they encounter at Center pay her any mind. In fact, it might just be that the baggy clothes and general lack of upkeep makes her _more_ invisible. It could be the Jedi makes a fuss because it reflects badly on him given their cover. She's supposed to be a family relation, after all. She doesn't care.

The Jedi’s finished with whatever he’s making and gets the pot off the heat. Her meal is plated already and on the counter. He grabs it, sliding her dish to her -- some roasted vegetable with ground nerf inside. The menu has changed in subtle ways, the inclusion of meat being one. The spicing of the meals is another. It started off subtle and it's slowly built up, but it's not anything that warrants comment. 

“Does ranite contain kyber crystals?” he asks, reaching for his own plate and approaching the table.

The questions are routine, though Mara can’t pinpoint when it started. She remembers asking him questions to verify the information she from her readings, as an exercise. Over the weeks, the Jedi has come to take over the asking. 

Progress remains agonizingly slow-going, her brain letting go of facts the second she reads them. Studying with the Jedi has helped incrementally, his technique with all its built-in repetition somewhat improving her recall, but not enough to matter. Every day she loses just a little more patience with herself.

“Ranite...” Mara draws a blank. She’s pretty sure he’s asked the question before. Frustration gnaws at her the longer she wrestles with the emptiness in her head, the answer aggravatingly out of reach.

“It doesn’t,” he goes on in the same easy tone after it's clear nothing's coming. “Ranite occurs close to kyber, but doesn’t contain any crystals.”

Mara chews, stares down at her plate. She’s months away from the illness and from the haze that made her unable to get up from bed. Her memory should be better by now. She knows it should be, but now that she does chores throughout the day, she keeps leaving her datapad somewhere in the living room or kitchen, and then forgetting entirely. She's taken off her hair tie and put it in the drawer of her bedside table only to search for it all day. She still needs to consult the flimsy with instructions for the chores she does despite having done them countless times. She forgets her credits if she doesn't slip them in her bag the night before. Sometimes she still forgets regardless. These are basic things.

"Bad night," she grumbles, shaking her head. Bad morning too. Just bad, bad, bad. It's been bad for days, weeks. What if there's nothing but bad?

“It doesn't help to berate yourself,” the Jedi’s said this before too, but these days it's gathered a tense undertone. 

Mara takes another bite. Her skill at putting up mental barriers doesn't show marked improvement. She wouldn't care except...what if the Jedi's wrong and she can do nothing with the crystals either? The thought that she might stay like this -- this useless, this much of a waste of resources -- makes her hands feel clammy. 

"What is 'the water of the kyber'?"

She tries to pin it down and finally her brain trips on it, because she remembers painting it. Opaque and translucent areas. "The mix of opacity and translucency that makes each kyber unique.” 

His elbows on the table, the Jedi asks, ”Are kyber crystals organic or inorganic?”

This is a common one, familiar like old shoes. “Unclear. Could be both organic and inorganic. The matrix seems too rigid to be organic, but shares some properties with organelles.” 

“Good,” he says brightly. 

But it’s not, and she doesn't know the answers to most of the next questions. That dull throb is starting up again, and she tamps down on an impulse to rub her temples. Worse, she catches the Jedi staring at her. He's not in her head, he shouldn't even know, but he does, she knows. Always.

* * *

The next morning a headache bursts into being as she’s tidying up after breakfast, the Jedi gone downstairs to do some routine maintenance on the enviro system with a diagnostic droid he bought at Nialin a week ago. Pain stabs, drills behind her right eye. Mara finds herself bending over the table, gets a hold of herself enough to sit. Closing her eyes helps some. She does more than that, and lowers her face onto the table.

The next thing she knows the Jedi is there, calling out her name. She feels his hand on her shoulder. He’s jostling her and his voice is too loud while her head's pounding stark misery. She wants to scream at him to shut up and leave her alone.

What she pushes out is a low, rattling "shut up, shut up" as she lifts her head. Light assails her, making the pounding worse, and she squeezes her eyes shut, hands covering her face, as she bows her head again.

Ans then she's being moved, being pulled to her room, to lie on her bed, but it’s a blur amid the way her head feels pulse hammered into oblivion. 

Mara closes her eyes.

It’s dark when she opens them. The blinds are down. She pulls herself up, feeling as if she’s been pummeled, as if she’s been running for miles, but she knows she did nothing close. All she remembers is a headache. One worse than all the headaches she’s had since…

Mara thinks back. The Jedi had been outside, so it’d been nothing he’d done. It’s been a headache. Just a bad one. 

A soft knock at her door.

”Yeah?” The Jedi opens the door, his figure amorphous at the threshold. 

He walks in, stopping by her bed as she slides her legs out. “Feeling better?”

Mara gives a short nod, reaches to the light at the bedside table. “ How late is it?”

His expression has that tightness from worry. “Afternoon. You should eat come something.”

Mara stands. The headaches she’s had thus far hadn’t felt like that -- none of them had been like this, not even at the market. The Jedi’s tense demeanor isn’t really helping.

He gets her plate and sits across from her. What he passes her is vaguely stew-like and bland. Mara forces one spoonful into her mouth then another, though she doesn’t feel hungry and even less for something mushy with no taste.

His eyes flicker over her. Radiating reluctance he ventures, “I think we might have been pushing too hard.”

Mara stills, her hand tightening on her utensil. 

"My sister's had migraines sometimes when she's overloaded, and you’ve been...frustrated with yourself--”

She lets go of her utensil as she squares her shoulders. Part of her registers the weirdness of him mentioning a sister -- it'd been just his aunt and uncle for as long as she can remember -- but she's caught by the second part of the statement, and scowls. “You’re not telling me it’s my fault.”

”No, no. Of course not. It’s not your fault. It’s -- it’s that you’ve been sick.” He blows out a breath, his shoulders sagging. "I mean maybe it's mine, and the market--"

”I was sick months ago.” She should blame him for the market, _that_ was his idea, but she finds herself arguing, "and if it's about the market then it should have happened then, not a week after."

”It hasn't been that long, and the headaches have gotten more frequent. The intensity of this one...Maybe the quizzing is not a good idea--”

” _I_ started the quizzing,” she says sharply. “I barely recall as anything as it is. If I stop going over the material, I won’t keep any of it.”

”Not stop. Scale back--”

Mara sets her jaw. “I’m not scaling back. We do so little it'd be like doing nothing at all.”

"That's not true." He adopts that old lecturing tone. “Mara, it helps you least of all--”

“To be treated like some sort of invalid, yes.”

The Jedi flinches and stands. Mara leans back on her chair and watches as he goes to the sink, his back to her. It has a sickening familiarity, bringing up memories of her hands and feet cuffed, dread gathering at the pit of her stomach with every minute that passes. The Jedi’s hands are on either side of him on the rim of the kitchen sink, his back bent slightly forward.

“I thought...of what we talked about a while back, seeing someone.” His voice is deceptively casual. He doesn’t feel like that at all. He feels like he’s bracing for a blow. “If you feel comfortable with the idea.”

“Seeing someone,” she repeats.

“For neural imaging -- a quick scan.”

Of her head. All of her feels cold. "It's the headaches," she blurts out. "You think there's something wrong."

The Jedi turns, his hands wringing before him, the movement a contrast to the calm in his voice. He appears to meet her eyes, but his gaze is off center. “It’s only to make sure. It’s been a lot on you these past months. I’m sure part of it is being sick and the -- the adaptation. This is an entirely different environment apart from everything, and it's been a...a challenge. Maybe we'll get confirmation of whether what you had was da'al fever. This could be about some kind of...dietary imbalance we can address.”

Her mouth has gone dry. He didn't actually answer the question. Never a good sign. Neither is the thought that she might still be under the effects of an illness. Still. And he feels weird. She can pick it out. There's something else.

“We don’t have to go,” the Jedi says quickly, returning to the table. His gaze focuses on her with disturbing intensity as he sits. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn't. Like I said it could be any number of things that go away with time, it's just -- it looked very painful this morning--” 

Parasitic brain infections, she stifles a shudder. “You think I still have some other...viral thing? In my head.” 

"No, no. I've just been thinking that after...everything you've been through, a general check-up is not a bad idea," he says tightly, and he's telling the truth there. "I've thought so for a while. It's just a clinic won't be the most comfortable setting, given how sensitive you are. It’s a more...complicated space than the market. I wanted to wait until you were more...at ease.” 

It takes Mara a second to process it. A clinic. Sick people.

”You _are_ doing much better in general and at grounding yourself, but if these are tension headaches, I’m not sure that environment helps.”

Now that he’s mentioned the possibility of _another_ , perhaps more persistent infection...she could have something else. Something else could have stayed behind. Is still behind. A parasite? 

Mara licks her lips. She still can’t make it through the market. She thinks of the table against her forehead earlier, that stabbing pain in her head.

”Mara?”

“It feels different,” she says. “The market. That’s a headache, but it’s like my head is too full. This was...behind my eye, a side of my head.” She feels adrift. But this could be _solvable_. That's what they do in medcenters. They'll diagnose whatever it is and they'll solve it. “I think I just want to know.”

The Jedi stares at her for a long time with the same anxious expression. “Rest for today and tomorrow," he says in the end. "We’ll go early the day after, and just get it out of the way as quickly as possible. If it’s too much we can always come back.” 

* * *

The little sleep she gets that night and the following one is predictably littered with talpini faces in flames, the feeling of drowning, and that malicious shadowy figure lurking in the background. Nightmares several times a week are frequent, but mostly she can make herself go back to sleep. These nights though, she stays with her heart thudding in her chest, an asphyxiating feeling settling on her with an immediacy she hasn't felt in a long time.

At least that piercing headache hasn't returned.

They leave before dawn. Mara climbs into the airspeeder in a haze, jungle mist all around them.

It doesn’t help that there's been something unnatural about the Jedi's quiet over the past days, as if all his assurances were empty and there _is_ cause for concern. It could just be that he’s worried one step into the clinic will send her running like the market does.

The Jedi didn’t even really know what that illness was -- it could have been _anything_ , the thought whirls in Mara’s head. It doesn’t matter what awaits her at the clinic. She’ll have to stick it out.

“It’s okay.” He starts up the repulsors. Her stomach is in knots as they lift off. “This is only a precaution.”

Mara bows her head. She can’t stop thinking of parasites lodged in the brain. They can diagnose whatever it is, she tells herself. If it's something, they can cure it. It's probably nothing, just her getting back up to speed. But who knows what was in the river? The fog nears, and dread swells up in her chest crushing enough that she finds herself thinking of the link. It could make that feeling go away. Just for a little while. She rubs her arms.

"It’ll be okay,” he says, but that has the ring of him speaking to himself.

It's been months since she’s been without the link, she tells herself. That’s done. It’s not just fake, it's _damaging_. She's done with it. No matter what. She’s never asking for it again. If it comes to that, she’ll just ask to go home.

The tightness in her doesn’t lessen, and Mara closes her eyes, thinking of the stream. She draws the bank where she sits and the clear water coursing through. She brings to her mind how the ground feels under her, the tree canopies and clouds above her. A phrase comes to mind, something she's read in the Jedi texts, _the body is the union point between earth and sky_. She imagines the swishing sound of the water, the weight of a stone in her hand, not just any stone, the perfect stone, one that will skip three times with a clear _slat-slat_ across the water. 

* * *

_"I've been there before."_

_“You have?" Luke felt his eyes widen. Mara approached the holo, her back to him, her form silhouetted in the blue lights of the green planet in front of them. "Myrra?"_

_"Yeah,” Mara said. "A long time ago. When the Satrapy was in charge." She stopped, then seemed to force herself into continuing. "One of my first assignments to the Outer Rim, if not the first. I...I crash landed, about a six day hike from Myrra -- the captain of the Star Destroyer that brought me there hated me on sight and sabotaged my 'fighter. Didn't figure that out until later." She raised a finger to the point that marked the capital on the blue-green globe. I didn't know there were kyber crystals there, much less an underground temple with a huge one."_

_A forlorn note underneath the words drew Luke to ask, "What is it?"_

_“Nothing, really." A beat and she added, "It was just a miserable hike through the jungle. That's what I remember the most."_

_"Not the relaxing stroll that Myrkr was?"_

_Mara's wry chuckle rang back. "Hardly. I'd crash landed, carried a couple of sprained ribs for my trouble. There was a lot of rain, too, might have been the wet season or close to it, I'm not sure." Her voice had gathered some cheer, but it soon grew increasingly solemn. "Couple of times I wondered if I'd make it out of the jungle. In training -- when I'd be left in the field, I always...I knew if I made a mistake, people would come for me. I didn't realize how much I had counted on that." She shook her head. "I was young. It was one of my first assignments, and I guess one of the first times I truly felt like I -- like I was in danger. And..."_

_He stepped closer when she didn't answer. “And what?”_

_“And it was, I don't know, night after night, by a tree, in some cave by myself -- I thought if I did die in the jungle, no one would know. It'd make no difference. No one would come for me. That's how it was. I'd been told but...Anyway I ended up dragging myself to Myrra. I finished the assignment, and I can't...remember feeling like that again. Not until much later."_

_It wasn't worth it if it took her back to that, he decided. It'd been just a thought. "We don't have to go," Luke said. "It's not the only Jedi temple in the galaxy."_

_"No, that was a long time ago," she replied, voice back to breezy, like a smile as he stepped up beside her. The languorous loops of clouds scattered across the topography breaking up the swaths of green. It looked like a beautiful place. "I want to go. When else am I going to get the chance to see a kyber crystal the size of an airspeeder?"_


	19. Chapter 19

##### XVIII. Symmetry Operation

  


  


* * *

6.11

  
There is no way to recover what is lost. Only begin anew. Force forgive us.  


* * *

~~~~

  


  


“We’re here.”

Mara wakes sluggishly. She'd been in a room, looking at a woman whose back was towards her...

She blinks a few times. She must have fallen asleep while meditating. It’s not yet light out. She’s inside the speeder, stiffens a bit, not recognizing the landscape outside the viewscreen -- 

“Where?” she whispers. The Jedi's going through the shut-down sequence. Outside the viewscreen, various bulky forms are lined up. Air speeders. They're at a hangar. 

“Myrra.” The Jedi waits for her to get out of her seat and slide out the hatchway before he trails after her. Her boots crunch on duracrete not dirt and she looks around as the Jedi locks down the speeder. Apart from the other airspeeders around them, there's even a couple of landspeeders too in the distance.

Had she really heard him say Myrra? The capital? Mara gives yet another confused look around. What are they doing in the capital? She still feels bleary with sleep as the Jedi comes over to her with two brown cloaks under his arm. He slides one over her, then shrugs on his own. She automatically brings a hand to the neck of her cloak, and pulls up the hood.

"Asher," she murmurs, the image of the dream woman's silhouette as she stared at the holomap uncannily clear. Nothing else is. It was a dream, but it feels more real than her present. This hangar in Myrra, of all places. Something feels different but she can't pinpoint why. Only one thing occurs to her muddled brain. Her words come out jumbled. "Didn't ask for the link. I didn't."

Worry comes into his face. "No, why? Are you all right?"

She shakes her head. Like she thought. Just a weird dream. It'd feel differently if the link had been up. She'd be a sniveling wreck for one. And she'd told herself she wouldn't. She should just be glad it wasn't a nightmare. It's just more weirdness from her head, and Mara rubs her eyes. The bleariness is slowly clearing. "Wait, this is Myrra?"

The Jedi looks at her for a second. Mara senses him wanting to press, but think better of it. “Outskirts of it.” His voice is hushed, eyes flicker up around them, alert. “The clinic isn’t far. It’s the only place that has the tech we need and won’t ask for identification.”

Clinic? The remaining haziness lifts at it.

Briskly, the Jedi leads her out the hangar, his hand at her elbow as they go down some stairs to get to the street. Unlike Nialin, the streets in Myrra, even in the outskirts, are narrow and windy.

The sky is only starting to lighten, so there’s no one around as they walk. The Jedi's eyes are on the dilapidated buildings on either side of them, posture squared, shoulders tensed. His demeanor puts Mara on edge. Eventually other beings come into view by another mud-splattered building at the far end of the street, an amorphous worry about the place like vapor.

Many of beings of various species make up a short line outside a run-down structure, most of them wearing cloaks. A few sit along the cracked facade. Pain glimmers through the widespread concern, the distress easier to pick out now that she's closer. Mara breathes deeply, tries to will it back. At the front end of the line door slides opens and someone calls. Mara starts counting her breaths in earnest. Several beings move forward, they look too short to be adults. Children? Her thoughts derail. They're unaccompanied. She tries counting again.

As they near, she catches sight of a snout under a hood in the figure in front of them, scaly skin under another behind them. She loses track of her breaths.

“ _This_?” she whispers furiously to the Jedi. "There's aliens here."

“They see humans,” the Jedi murmurs back, "Your center."

Mara draws another breath and begins counting anew.

A few seconds and she feels the Jedi's hand, a light touch at her elbow.

She opens her eyes and sees the Jedi tipping his head towards the doorway, urging her forward. The sun is sneaking out over the buildings by the time they’re near the doorway, only a few beings in front of them. A rotund Sullustan armed with a datapad steps back to let them into a small reception area when it's their turn. The Jedi walks in, tugging Mara along. 

She scans around not recognizing the thick chemical smell that lingers in the air. It doesn’t help her nerves. A medcenter, she'd thought, not some illegal outpost infirmary. Cold sweat prickles at her back.

An elderly Duros male stands waiting beside the door to her right, the Sullustan talking to him. At the end of the room there's a reception desk and a door. To her left the cloaked children she saw earlier speak in an incongruous guttural tongue that isn’t the pidgin Basic Mara expects. A Twi'lek nurse in gray clothes emerges from the doorway beside the reception desk opposite them and calls out a name. The children move forward, one of them extending stumpy arm, revealing it to be of a gray color. Not children, she realizes. Talpini. One of them turns and looks squarely at Mara.

Under its hood, its face is hideously rotted.

It smiles.

Mara gasps, barely manages to suppress a scream, and steps back, stumbling into the Jedi. 

"What is it?" he asks urgently whirling, then peering into her face, his pupils are huge and dark, the irises a fringed blue. His arm snakes around her back, his sense more agitated, "Mara, what is it?"

Mara skitters away a step, shaking her head, a shiver running through her, the muddle of feeling around her growing loud. She rubs her trembling hands and sneaks a glance at the talpini. It's still looking at her, but its face is not rotted, only piggish and ordinary for what it is. It's not smiling either, only projects a neutral curiosity that mingles with the other mental states around her as the Twi'lek nurse calls again. It's too much. Mara brings her hand up to her head, throbbing starting up at her temples.

 _Mara_. 

Mara closes her eyes. The Jedi's presence seep into her mind, the ache at her temples inching back. It’s fine, she tells herself, and the Jedi’s presence projects that back to her. 

_It was nothing. This’ll be over soon. Find your center. Breathe._

“You two!” the Sullustan barks at them, startling Mara into a slight jump. The Jedi's presence flickers a flash of anger before it's gone from her mind, and Mara frowns. He'd been in her head. How long had it been since he'd gone into her mind? She can't remember. 

The Sullustan gestures for them to come with him.

Taking a deep breath, Mara follows behind the Jedi as the Sullustan leads them to the main desk. A Duros nurse opens the door beside it, revealing an interior hall and the elderly Duros male trudges in. 

Beside her, the Jedi's eyes flit to her and he says to the Sullustan, “We're here for her. She contracted something like da’al fever around three months ago, had several febrile seizures...” 

Mara moves away as the Jedi continues, not wanting to hear more. She tries to focus on her breathing again. A couple of human women have come in, one of them visibly pregnant, and her gaze roves over Mara. Mara ducks her head further into her hood, losing track of her breaths.

The Jedi has lowered his voice, his eyes occasionally drifting in her direction. The Sullustan takes some notes on a datapad. He says something back, and the Jedi passes him a pouch of credits before he moves towards Mara. 

She doesn’t like it, Mara thinks, as the Jedi approaches. Her hands clench beside her. None of it. Not being here, not the Jedi going into her head, nor the troubled way he feels. 

"Your center," he admonishes quietly.

In the midst of her next round of counting a group of Twi’lek have walked in, two carrying a third who hops along. She remembers the Palace medcenters, their clean, long corridors, the brisk competent faces of the human physicians. Her check-ups were never pleasant, but they were not _this_.

“We’re early, it’s not going to be a long wait,” the Jedi tells her. Something disconsolate has come into his eyes. She shuts her own, opens them again, wants to curl up in a corner and disappear. She draws in a long breath, holds it, and releases it slowly, counts five breaths.

When she's done, the Jedi touches her elbow lightly. “You're doing well. Here,” he hands her a datapad, the make like the Sullustan’s, “they want more data from you. Write in as much as you know. If you can't...” His free hand flutters beside him in the general direction of her shoulder before it lowers. 

She makes herself look down and read the document. Most of it is easy to fill out. No allergies. No serious medical interventions. She's about to input the name of the suppressor given to her as a matter of course when she realizes it's past by several months.

Her mouth goes dry.

 _Any human female with a calling gets hormonal suppressors_ , the physician had told her. _It regulates your hormonal cycle into a more efficient state._

Mara finishes the data entry as quickly as she can. She doesn't want to think about having a calling, about efficiency. She wants to throw the datapad down and make for the doors. There's nothing worse than remembering. Now, there's a knot at her throat.

”It's okay,” the Jedi murmurs taking the datapad from her. “It’s okay. You're done.” He goes to hand the datapad to the Sullustan who has moved to the pregnant woman.

Mara looks down at the floor, her feet rubbing the dirt on the permacrete surface.The Jedi's beside her before long, and she doesn't have to look at him to sense that budding desperation in him, just barely tucked away. That's what she's feeling.

Is it? Hers or his? Mara sets her jaw. As if the situation isn’t rubbing her raw as it is.

"It's coming from you," she mutters under her breath, the pieces falling into place. The image of the woman from her dream.

"What?"

"I'm seeing what you're thinking," she hisses at him for lack of better words. "What you're feeling. It's not me being ungrounded this time, it's _you_. Fucking stop it already."

Shock breaks through the Jedi's features. Just then, the Mon Cal nurse opens the door beside the reception desk and calls, “Edaj?”

The Jedi jerks his head in her direction, unease stark in his face. “Come on.”

Mara walks on to meet the nurse, looking over her shoulder for the Jedi lagging behind her with a slight air of reluctance. The nurse leads them into the corridor, where the paint is cracked on the walls, and into a small windowless room. They start with a pretty standard weigh-in, the Mon Cal’s enormous eyes blinking at the digits. Thankfully, she doesn’t comment, instead pushes Mara against a yellowed height chart. She takes Mara’s blood pressure and disappears to get what she needs to draw blood.

“I don’t like it,” she says because forming words is _some_ distraction as her eyes dart around the almost bare room. The Jedi stays by the wall beside the door. “This place feels like it’s falling apart. Do they even have the hardware for that imaging thing?”

“We’ll be done soon.” She gets the sense that he’s miles away. Better that than lobbing all his cloying feelings her way.

“I don’t think it matters anyway." Her mouth forms half filtered words. "If whatever I had just ate a chunk of my brain, then it’s not like I can do anything anyway. It’s not coming back or anything, just going to be the same thing--”

“Nothing ate a chunk of your brain." The Jedi's eyes focus on her, voice slightly sharp in that impatient way she knows well by now. For a second everything feels normal. “You’re okay. This is just --”

The Mon Cal nurse returns with her tray, and Mara sits while she gets poked, her blood gushing into the vial. It feels antiquated, both the type of hypo used and the quantity she's getting.

Once it’s done she gestures for Mara to follow her. She looks back, but the Jedi stays in the room. The nurse hurries her on and she looks back again, the Jedi trailing behind her, reluctance in his movements. The nurse hustles her into another room, tapping the claws of her webbed fingers onto her other palm. She has Mara sit and puts a weird kind of helmet on her head. Mara’s not familiar with any of it, but follows the instructions. 

It’s done before long. The Jedi approaches the nurse, Mara watching the exchange from the corner of her eye, imagining the kind of story he’s feeding her. Like with the Rodian, that she’s a cousin, that maybe she fell into the river by mistake, then got bit by something, and here she is. 

Out of nowhere the thought hits like a thunderclap. _He thinks he did this._

The latent anxiety from him, his presence feeling unmoored in her head -- it makes sense now. He’s not concerned that it’s some disease from the river, he’s concerned about the wreckage he left when he ripped her head apart. When he took her --

“Mara?” he calls.

It’s like the sound of rushing water, the burn at her forehead when she’d breathed in water, an overwhelming feeling of despair.

A dead woman’s clothes. That woman she'd seen looking up at the map from her back, her outline by a holoprojector in a darkened room. That's the woman.

Was.

The Jedi comes over to her and touches her arm, Mara jerks away, but starts walking again. The Mon Cal nurse comes back, and tells her there were some technical difficulties and she needs to try the helmet again to make sure all areas are clear for analysis. Mara makes a face -- of course in this decrepit infirmary they’d be inefficient and everything would take twice as long. 

After they’re taking the narrow street back to the hangar. Mara’s limbs feel heavy and heavier still in the mid-morning heat. The Jedi’s silence too feels just as heavy. He doesn't speak until they're back in the speeder.

"That's it. We're done," he says tightly. "You did really well--"

“What about the results?”

She sees him swallow and turn back to doing his final check before initiating the repulsorlifts. “It’ll take them a day.” He's looking down at the nav as he says, “They’ll send them.”

A day feels too long, she thinks. “Did they say anything to you? About what it could be?” Above them the hangar opens and they lift off.

“They wouldn’t know anything until they look at the tests.” The Jedi looks straight ahead. “From what I told them, they said it’s probably just the strain of...of everything.”

Mara’s certain it isn’t, but she’s suddenly too exhausted to continue the conversation. She lays her head back and closes her eyes wishing everything away.

* * *

She sleeps the whole way back, but doesn’t dream. She wants to continue in her room after she walks into the cabin, but the Jedi stops her.

“Wait, Mara.” It’s just background noise, and she keeps walking until his hand is at her elbow. He's touching her way too much, she thinks, but he drops his hand before she can tear her arm away. “You can sleep after lunch. They found you slightly underweight. We're on the right track, but not completely out yet. They gave me some supplements--”

”I’m eating fine.” She glares at him and keeps going.

The Jedi drops his voice to a conciliatory tone. “Yes, and it’s going well. It’s just important to keep it up. I’ll heat up something quick.”

She stays where she is and he adds, “You really want to go through the fever and all that again?”

Mara turns around. The routine is a bit much after the clinic, and she snaps, “Was that better or worse than when you damaged me?”

He stiffens. “I didn't --”

“How does the link work, exactly?” She goes to sit at the table and crosses her legs and squaring her shoulders. He wants to nag at her. Fine. She's got her own accounting to do.

His face goes carefully blank. "What?"

"There's the link that sends me to sleep. But there's something else. When you check on me," she taps her temple, "But that doesn't feel like the link. It was weird today."

The Jedi looks very uncomfortable, and her stomach clenches. Her own reaction makes a tight band of heat gather around her middle. Why does anything surprise her anymore?

"They're not different," she guesses, making her voice neutral.

He slowly shakes his head. "It's," he begins with some difficulty, "it's a matter of degree. When I check on you, it's -- it's at the middle of the spectrum."

She raises her chin. "Which is why sometimes I see things. From you."

The Jedi looks more uncomfortable still when he pushes out, "The kind of connection we have is not the kind of mindlink you had. To some degree..." His lips tighten to a grim line and he falls silent.

"To some degree what?"

"To some degree it's always been the case that there's a -- a two-way transfer."

Mara blinks. "I'm always getting...," her face twists in disgust, "things from you?"

"I do my best to control it,” he blurts out, “but sometimes, especially when the link's at the far side of the spectrum--"

 _Far side_ of the spectrum, that's _the_ link, when he wipes her clean out. She feels herself grow rigid. 

"Where does it go?" she whispers, genuine dread inching into her. Months. “All the stuff from you--”

He raises his hands slowly. "That's why it's best when you sleep. You probably hold it in your subconscious, it gets processed the way everything else does. It goes away."

She listens with mounting horror. Who knows what kind of subliminal effect all that has? She can’t bear to ask _or_ think about it, looks down at her lap. "Gone away," she doesn't realize she's spoken out loud until she hears herself.

Very gently, the Jedi says, "The link hasn't been up in over two months, Mara. You're done with it. You’re doing well, you won’t need it again. Whatever you got from me is long gone. It probably wasn't--"

Her head snaps up. None of that's an answer. "Liar. That’s only the far end of the spectrum," she seethes. "You just said that, but today I saw something. From you. You're still throwing your thoughts and feelings at me." Her voice raises in spite of her. "You think I'm so stupid."

”No." Color seeps from his face. There's a flash of some emotion that's quickly contained. "No...this is part of the same thing. Your Force sensitivity. The barriers--"

That’s not an answer either. Mara grits her teeth. "It's not a barrier issue," she jerks to her feet, stabbing a finger in his direction, "when it's you _shoving yourself_ at me." She turns the finger emphatically on herself. "Just when I think that there's the remotest possibility my head will _ever_ be my own, you show me that no, it's not--"

He shakes his head. “Mara, I'm trying --"

"My _other_ mindlink didn’t make me into an emotion sucking sponge," she shouts. "I was _myself_."

The Jedi steps back, expression changing to disbelief. "Yourself? Yourself?" He says the word like there's affront in it. "You tried to kill yourself. Twice. _That's_ what the Emperor's mindlink left you. Because of _him_." The Jedi leans forward, and his color has returned in bright splotches across his cheeks, posture coiled. "He's why we had to go to the clinic in the first place. _He_ ," the Jedi's hand clenches into a fist and bangs down hard on the table the thud jolting her, "did this to you. And you know it!"

All her words fail her and she thinks she might have thrown something, but there's nothing to grab. Instead, she shoves her chair over with a shout and storms into her room, slamming the door. She feels him again at the horizon of her awareness as she sits on the floor by her bed and brings her head into her hands, hating him _so much_. He’s a liar. A filthy fucking liar. Tears trickle down her closed eyelids, soaking her hands. She knows this. She's always known this.

Four years, she thinks. Four years and she can go. But is that even true? Does it even matter if it isn't? Where would she even go?

She doesn't know how much time passes before she hears a knock at her door. Another.

Mara stays where she is. 

"I -- I know I shouldn't have said anything. It's -- it's different for you. All this." The Jedi speaks through the closed door as if he can't help himself. "But I hate what he did to you. I hate it. I hate that we had to go to a clinic because of it. After everything."

The Jedi's quiet for so long Mara thinks he may have left at that, but his voice returns.

"He never cared. He doesn't. If he had he would have sent someone after you. When you didn't come back. He could have turned the jungle inside out looking for you. He's the Emperor. You're worth that and more. So what does that make him?"

Silence thickens. Mara doesn't lift her head from her hands.

"I -- I may be a monster to you but if-- if it were me, _I_ would have looked for you. Through every inch of the jungle. I would have left everything behind. _Everything_. And come bring you back myself. I wouldn't have left you out there. I...," his voice sounds strangled there even through the door, "I hate what I did to you. I'd have changed it. All of it. If I could have. If I'd known how. I -- I wish things had been different. Not a day goes by when I don't."

His presence is so _close_ in her mind. Middle of the spectrum, the words swim in her head. A check. And yet... there’s a gaping hole within her. For as long as it’s up, the link is the perfect fit for it. She wants the link, it crystallizes, wants it more than _anything_.

It can’t be. It can’t be that she wants her self shuttled away into nothing, her own will tramped on. It can’t be she _wants_ him to make her go away. Still. Even after all this time. It's a betrayal of herself. It was that part of her whose throat she'd wanted to slit, that part who she'd wanted to drown. Not all of her. That was the mistake. It was only a part.

 _I'm going to deny you. I'm going to starve you,_ she promises. By the time four years are through, she might just be able to leave it for dead. Maybe that's worth living for. It's the only hope she's got.

A moment later Mara draws a breath, and pushes her shoulders back, wipes at her face with the sleeves of her tunic. She goes to open the door and he straightens up. He has a bowl in hand. That's all she focuses on.

“Mara, I --”

She rips the bowl from his hand and slams the door shut.

* * *

The day’s exhaustion fills her up with sleep after she eats, and she wakes up at some point in the late afternoon. The Jedi had been meditating when she'd come out. She'd washed the bowl she used for lunch, served herself some dinner left on the pulse oven and ate it in her room. She'd heard the water on in the 'fresher by the hall, so she'd assumed he'd gone to shower. Mara had washed the dinner plate, and had returned to her room, tinkered with the graphics program, and gone through her usual round of meditation.

The day had incongruously ended with her falling into surprisingly deep sleep until the sun is bright through the windows. Her eyelids flutter open at the usual sounds of the Jedi getting breakfast done, the clink of pots. For a while it’s normal, up until she remembers the clinic.

And she’s scrambling up and out of the room. 

The Jedi turns around from where he’s frying something the second her door opens, right as she says, “Did they send you the results yet?”

He shakes his head, his expression neutral, and for a second the yesterday's argument flashes through her mind. It's not important now.

“Not yet, but soon,” he answers. "It’ll be fine."

The way he says it makes her suck in a breath, because it doesn’t sound like he’s convinced at all. Not by a long shot. 

At a loss, she turns and ambles to the ‘fresher, half expecting the Jedi’s knock, but she goes through her routine without it. When she comes back out, he’s sitting at the table with that odd distant look he had at the clinic, a plate of florakeet eggs in front of him. He raises his eyes to her when she walks to get food, and summons a small tremulous smile that’s actually _worse_. 

“You’re making me nervous,” she mumbles as she gets a plate. “I don’t know who you think you’re fooling.” She grabs some of yesterday's flatbread and jam, along with the stupid plastoid knife. “I don’t even see what _you’re_ so worried about if all I’m going to be doing is feeling out crystals.” She scoffs a little as she sits back down. 

He doesn’t answer, his head bent over his datapad, which just confirms how anxious he is for the results. He’s doesn’t usually get on it while he eats. He puts it down somewhat reluctantly and takes distracted bites of his eggs. The vibration comes when she’s about halfway through her own food. The Jedi is immediately on the datapad again, his fingers sweeping over the screen, the anxiety stark from the almost spasmic movements of his fingers to the way his face goes ashen, the feeling trickling through the Force is something Mara can pick out, even secondhand.

Terror. 

It’s the first time she vanishes from his attention, the whole of him directed at whatever the results say.

She watches him read the message for a second before she presses, “Well? What does it say?”

The Jedi doesn’t answer right away. “It’s all fine,” he half gasps out a tense moment later. His voice sounds huskier when he repeats the exact same phrase again. “The read-out says everything is completely normal.”

He stands up from the table suddenly, a swell of some deep emotion that somehow makes her recall his face that first day. Happiness, an almost desperate sort, submerged in a well of grief. It's more powerful now. Mara feels it seep into her, making a lump in her throat, her vision going watery. The force of it is shocking enough to rob her of speech.

As she wipes her cheek the Jedi has turned his face away, bringing a hand up as he stands. Taking a shuddering breath, he turns to walk down the hall. His back is to Mara, but the way his back and arm curve, she thinks his hand is still raised, covering his face as he walks to the first room she’d slept in, the one that is now his. 

Sunlight streams from its open door into the hall. The Jedi’s shoulders are hunched as he strides toward it, and she doesn't know why she feels as if he's limping when he isn't. He closes the door behind him.

It’s beyond strange, not the usual pattern at all. He even left his plate on the table, half finished. 

Mara feels like dropping her head onto her hands, but slowly inches the feeling back as she reaches for the datapad. A lie? Was that a lie?

But as her eye tracks down, the medical jargon seems clear. _No anomalies found_.

“No anomalies,” she whispers, tracing the words with her fingers. The words blur and she wipes her face again and sniffs, looking up to the darkened hall, the room where the Jedi has disappeared into.


	20. Chapter 20

  


##### XIX. Marasieh Edaj

  


* * *

2.14

Kyber crystals emerge through the movement of a planetary crust, from the grinding of fault lines as in when an oceanic plate slides against a continental plate. The crystals rise, gathering impurities or other minerals along the way. It is for this reason that they are said to be _grown_.

* * *

  


  


Things realign into some semblance of normal after that. When the Jedi emerges again, his steps are lighter around her, demeanor brighter than it’s ever been.

Mara's memory doesn’t improve.

“It’s getting worse,” she mutters when he’s quizzing her one evening. She idly moves the rice all around the plate with her spoon.

“It’s not” the Jedi replies easily. “You just fixate on what you don’t get.”

She shoves the rice to the front of her plate. “The test results said I was fine.”

“You _are_ fine. And you know being hard on yourself is counterproductive. You got all answers correct last night."

"Yes, but kyber varieties are an easy topic." Mara almost picks up her plate to throw it out, but the way he looks at it makes her roll her eyes. She can almost count down to a nag. 

With a sigh she shovels two more spoonfuls into her mouth, then goes to throw the rest out. He doesn’t look pleased, but she made the minimum. 

"Always something," he chides at her, picking up his empty plate. “You won't get everything right all the time," he chirps. "Be happy with all the progress you did make.” 

Mara rolls her eyes at his obnoxious cheer.

It’s his turn to tidy up, so Mara goes into her room. She’s halfway through some reading on piezoelectric properties when there’s a knock on the door.

“Yeah?”

The Jedi opens and pops his head in. “Can I show you something?”

She grunts out an affirmative as she cracks her back. He walks in with something in his hands. A servomotor.

An uneasy look passes through his face as he lays it down in the middle of the room, apprehension. She can pick out he’s worried this will upset her, but this is not really the sort of thing that makes her choke up. Tech classes are run of the mill for anyone who’s literate.

“You were taught about this stuff right?”

He can be annoyingly imprecise in spite of his fussiness. “Stuff?”

The Jedi gestures to the servomotor. “Engine work.”

She frowns, leaning towards it. “Basics, yeah.”

He sits on the floor. “You think you might remember?”

She feels her brows draw together. “Why?” She twists her mouth. “Probably don’t. Forgot where the forks were before dinner.”

“You didn’t.” He fiddles with a loose wire. “I moved them.” 

“Yeah, _yesterday_ , I should have remembered that.”

He points to the servomotor. “Just take a look. Can you pick out the parts and their function?”

Mara pushes off the bed and sits down across from him, the servomotor between them. She tilts her head, looking at the piece of machinery, points to the middle. “This is the shaft. Transmits power.”

“Input or output?”

“Output.” She raises her eye to another component -- it’s a magnet, she knows. Mara lifts her palm to it. “Rotor.” She draws her hand up. “Ball bearing’s here. Winding’s on top.”

There’s a smile in the corner of the Jedi’s lips. “What’s the winding for?”

She inhales. “Current. Creates a magnetic field.” He’s smiling fully now and she narrows her eyes, gesturing to the back of the apparatus. “Stator. Stop looking at me like that, Asher,” she blurts out with a glower.

The smile is gone, replaced by polite interest. “What else?”

“Here.” She taps the back. “It’s...” she almost has it, "this piece watches the number of rotations and the position of the shaft." Finally she leans back. “The encoder.”

He nods, clearly pleased. “You got all of it.”

Her shoulders slump. “So I can recite servomotor parts. I still couldn’t remember the utensils and that's today.”

The Jedi purses his lips. “I think...I know what the issue is.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “What?”

He looks down at the servomotor. “Your older memories are fine. It’s new ones that might... have trouble forming, but,” his voice speeds up, “it’s not something insurmountable. There’s a lot of strategies that can be used to deal with it.”

Mara stands and goes to sit back on the bed. She expects the Jedi to grab the servomotor and leave, but he remains seated for a few more seconds.

“For some people,” he starts slowly, “this can be a consequence of having lived through... extreme stress.”

What he did to her, of course. She gets that tight feeling in her chest. 

A brittle look crosses his eyes. Mara looks away. 

“If --”

“Stop.”

He does, but he can’t help himself for long. “We'll work through it. You can manage it,” he says, determined. “We can observe it further. If it’s about the way memory is stored, we can cope with it. If it’s a matter of remembering, there are techniques using the Force. This will be a -- a challenge to work through. But you can overcome it. Ultimately, it won't -- it won't limit you.”

Mara leans forward incredulously. “The Force can help me with my memory?”

“It will depend on whether you store the memory in your mind to begin with. If it's there, you can access it. If it's not, we can still keep working, encourage habits and other strategies -- you're young, your brain has more elasticity. Nothing's set in stone for you."

Mara just looks at him, taken aback not so much by the words as by the bright _feeling_ in them. It's almost the opposite of the previous gloom. She hadn't even known that's what it was before.

"And that's just a small fraction of what you can draw from the Force. How can grow with it. You've come so far just in terms of your concentration and focus. Your only limits are interest and discipline.”

She frowns at the memory that bubbles up. She hadn’t been old enough _then_. Her insides twist further. This is as much as she can take of this conversation. She stands up, goes to the ‘fresher, and closes the door to start to get ready for bed. He and the servomotor are gone by the time she comes out.

* * *

There's a slight drizzle the next morning that feels like mist. Mara barely notices as she digs up the tila -- the yellow root vegetables in the southern part of the plot -- and puts them into the container next to her. 

“They call this dry season," the Jedi says from over by the satei bushes. "You believe that?” She sees him shake his head in the periphery of her vision. “I guess it makes sense. People don't think the desert has seasons either, but it does. Although when they say it's really just hot and not so hot, they're not exactly wrong." 

He's started rambling again like before. It's a bit of variety from the talk about kybers.

"Guess they say that about here too," he goes on. "'Wet and not so wet.'"

They do still talk about the kybers a lot, and that's fine, but the anecdotes he recounts are...amusing. They paint a strange picture, some gangly kid on some desert farm, bumbling, but well-meaning. It’s supposed to be him, the Jedi, but it isn’t. It's _Asher_ , and so she can, if not enjoy, precisely, be distracted by these stories, tales of a simple life on the edges of civilization, where poor sods get their kicks rock-chimney climbing, get their water taxed by Hutts, or race the smaller version of their junker through a canyon at full speed.

His voice is rueful. "Nothing's as dry as the desert."

Despite the drizzle, the Jedi's in no hurry. When Mara straightens up and pats the dirt off her gardening gloves, she finds him looks up at the sky, squinting. It’s sunny still, but the sun is partially obscured by clouds, its rays peeking through. 

Mara grabs her container and goes to the steps, watching them turn from brown to gray in the drizzle. She could go in, but she doesn't know where the Jedi wants the tila.

He goes back to the bushes. "We got a great yield. They said sat can be tricky, but I guess we got lucky." He likes sat, she'd gathered. It's not bad, kind of reminds her of a muja in taste.

The Besalisk probably gave him a hard time about growing it. He and the Jedi take up good-natured arguments over effective gardening techniques every time the Jedi and Mara make a stop at Uya Ta's. All that back and forth on mulching is deathly boring, but at least the candied nuts at Uya Ta's are decent.

And the Besalisk was definitely wrong to have doubted Asher, who’s gesturing to an overly full container beside him. "You mind getting me a couple more of these? Sublevel to your left, beside the door." 

Mara gets him the extra containers to hold the excess, and listens to him go on and on about the various recipes he can try to avoid waste, and how they might take a box full on their next run to Nialin and give them to several beings who've shared some of their garden surplus with him in the past. That's also a custom here. They still have some ceae that some Twi'lek family passed Asher a week ago. 

He goes into the kitchen to figure out how to put away everything and get lunch started while Mara goes to her room, to go over the documents before the meal is ready. During lunch he nags at her so much about the quantity of sat they have to go through, she ends up having a bowl of it with cloudcream. She feels full enough that when she curls on the sofa to read on light diffraction on prisms, her eyelids grow heavy.

The next thing she knows she's waking from an impromptu nap. She stretches and reaches for the datapad on her lap. A turn of her head shows the Jedi a few paces away by the windows where he's meditating. 

She's fine with meditating before bed, and whenever they go to crowded places so the atmosphere won't get to her, but she supposes she'll have to increase the frequency when they get the crystals. There's several meditations _with_ the crystals in the texts. The Jedi has mentioned that eventually she'll make up her own _meditative approach_ to them. It's a ways off, obviously.

Mara stares at the Jedi for a moment. She sees him exhale and shift his head slightly, coming out of the session. She's noticed he meditates two or three times a day.

The way she herself meditates now is different from how she used to when she began. She still uses the stream; it's better than the simple counting. A clean kind of quiet comes over her when she's done. If it's a particular good session, she might not feel any urge to go to the _real_ stream. She might take another path and go elsewhere -- the Jedi's shown her several -- or be content going through the chores at the cabin, doing her readings, or tinkering with engine parts as a kind of refresher of her familiarity with tech.

“Have a look at this.” Asher's now at the table, picking up his datapad. 

"You could have woken me," she grumbles, her eye scanning down what looks like a document once he brings the datapad over. "I shouldn't have been sleeping in the middle of the day like -- what's this?"

This Agreement made and entered into this ____ day of __________________, ___, by and between Asher Sunwhite, hereinafter referred to as “employer,” and ________________, hereinafter referred to as “employee.”

The parties recite that:

A. Employer is engaged in crystallographic research.

B. Employee is willing to be employed by employer, and employer is willing to employ employee, on the terms and conditions hereinafter set forth.

For the reasons set forth above, and in consideration of the mutual covenants and promises of the parties hereto, employer and employee covenant and agree as follows: 

Mara raises her eyes to him.

“A contract." She feels a trickle of nervousness from the Jedi before it vanishes. He's still not that good at sealing his feelings away. He says he's not that clear why, he does try -- he's speculated it might be a byproduct of the link, and if so, like everything it should lessen with time. "Someone I knew said that whenever there was work involved, there should be a contract. It’s a legally binding--”

“I know what a contract is." She flashes him a skeptical look. "But that’s not even your name.”

He leaves the datapad on the table and goes to one of the kitchen drawers, coming back with something that he places on the table. An identification card. His holo and the name Asher Sunwhite. It should be a fake, Mara is sure of it, but even though she takes it in her hands and examines it thoroughly, she sees no indications of it being counterfeit. She can still remember being taught to pick a fake on sight.

He hasn’t moved from where he stands. “It’s a legitimate identification card. An official document.”

Mara makes a skeptical noise. Even if it were official that means nothing. She wouldn’t put it past him to have gotten it through underhanded means. The Jedi's perfectly able to mindtrick anyone into doing whatever he wants. 

“It’s a legal name,” he says lightly, which she notes, is not the same as _real_. “We’ll get documents for you too. Once we do, we can amend it with the name you choose to make it official.”

A name she chooses? But another question seems important. “How?”

“I have some connections.”

“And so what?” _Connections_. To the traitor in court? More of them? Her stomach turns over. “I could take this to the courts?” She throws him a humorless smile. "Sue you?" Mara slaps the card back on the table. It’s a lie like everything else. 

He pushes the datapad closer to her side, past the identification card. “The contract...it’s a map. Of--of terms and the work. You asked what I wanted of you -- you’ve always asked that -- it’s all there. All of it. Legal and binding. Nothing more, nothing less. Including payment.”

She presses her lips into a line. “It needs to get notarized to be legal.”

He waves a hand. “That won’t be a problem.”

She can’t stop thinking of _connections_. Of that traitor who sold her out right under --

"Payment?” she makes herself say.

He nods, expression apprehensive, clearly catching the downturn of her sense. “Your salary. Go on -- look through it.”

“I don’t have to.” She stares at the datapad. “Can’t really say no, can I?”

For a breathless second she thinks he might tell her she can. The ground feels like it might shift under her feet. It feels like being poised at the edge of a drop where the bottom isn’t visible.

“No,” he says after a moment. “But we'll revise it until you can live with it.”

The double meaning isn’t lost on her.

She picks up the datapad and scrolls down without looking, keys in the printing function, and presses her thumb to the bottom. She pushes Asher's datapad away, picks up her own, and goes to her room.

* * *

The contract appears in the files on the datapad he’s given her. She makes it a whole week without reading through it.

When curiosity gets the better of that dank feeling that comes over her when she thinks of it, she clicks it open, and starts reading. There’s little surprise when it comes to the duties it lays out, research and record keeping. The duration is as he’d said, four years. She doesn’t have a metric for this type of job, so she can’t tell if the payment is exorbitant or piddling. Below the listing of her duties, there’s the ‘service occupier agreement’ which requires her to live in the same premises for the duration of the job. 

She startles at a flexibility clause that sets that last as subject to revision _under the discretion of the undersigned_.

She’s not sure what that means. That eventually she could live elsewhere? She finds the possibility yields no feelings, just her default numbness. She would still have the work to do, whether she does it on the Jedi’s property or elsewhere down the line makes no difference.

* * *

A week after she read the contract Mara is watching Center turn small out of the transparisteel, the whir of repulsorlifts lulling, when Asher clears his throat and blurts out, “I was talking to Terku.” She thinks he might mean the Rodian. “And they’re looking for a mechanic to take over the shop in the settlement. The last one passed away.”

It takes a few minutes for her to sort out what he’s saying, and then all the tech refreshers make sense. Of course. But more than that--

“We’re moving.” She sees him nod through the reflection in the speeder glass. Cold washes over her. She thinks of Nialin and the locals and being surrounded by them all day, every day. She's not _that_ good at centering herself. She still gets headaches sometimes. "No."

“There’s a place at the edge of Nialin that hasn’t been occupied for a while," he says tentatively. "It's closer to Center, but not in it. Closest neighbors are a few minutes by landspeeder." He sighs. "We can wait longer, if you feel strongly about it, but I don't want to spend the next season at the cabin." His gaze is troubled. "We won't."

Mara still feels wary.

"I thought...," his voice gentles, "I thought somewhere less isolated might be good. I know you like the stream, but I'm sure there will be other spots near the new place. It makes a good base for the Ba'wan Caverns. They're our closest access point to the old training grounds. "

That starts making more sense.

He nods. "We'll get set up, and we can see about working with the actual crystals."

If it's not in Center, it can't be that bad, she reasons, but another thought makes her uneasy. “Wait, why are we wasting time working as techs? We should be focusing exclusively on working with the crystals.”

Asher’s eyes flicker to her. “There’s years of work ahead of us, and it has to be done in secret. No one can know about the kyber crystals in those caves.” He tilts his head meaningfully. “It’s a small settlement, Mara. If we don’t provide a reason why we’re here, beings are bound to ask questions.”

Mara thinks back to how Asher socializes with different beings every time they’re at Center -- how he's been ingratiating himself to them mimicking their customs, with kind words, and their garden surplus. He’s made himself part of their community. That was no coincidence, she realizes. He planned all this.

”Knowledge about the kyber crystals is...sensitive, you know that. It’s best we don’t call attention to ourselves. We do that by trying to blend in.”

Mara’s stomach clenches.

”It won’t be that hard, especially if we provide that service. They won’t give us a second thought.” She feels his gaze on her, but she keeps her eyes on the transparisteel. 

"The new place,” he goes on, “it’s not luxurious by any means, but we’re used to simple.”

Mara supposes that she shouldn't want to stay at the cabin, the place with the nearby stream where she’d tried to drown herself, the 'fresher where she’d tried to slit her own throat, the room where the Jedi had gone into her mind, broken it, and ripped her life away so she can classify pretty crystals for him.

But she doesn’t think about that as much as the crystals, anything that gets them closer to her work on them has to be good. A real kyber crystal. They would need a cover story.

She doesn’t speak again until they’re back at the cabin. The Jedi has landed the speeder and she asks, “When?”

“Before the heavy rains start again.” He stays silent for a moment, then, in what seems like a fit of courage, he mumbles, “I never meant for this to last this long. To spend so long...here. It’s been too long. Shouldn't have been me-- ” He stops, maybe realizing he's saying nonsense. When she meets his eyes questioningly he looks away.

* * *

Two nights later he comes over when she’s tending to the compost bin, double checking the list affixed to the cabinet, radiating subtle tension as he shows her a page on his datapad. "Here."

All she sees are names all the way down. She feels her brows gather. “What am I looking at?”

“Variations of your name. Longer versions of it.”

She makes a face, eye drifting over one. “Esmara?”

He shrugs. “Just one option out of many. For your last name we can just flip it like we did at Myrra. Jade to Edaj. Which of the names would you like?”

“I don’t need a new name, Asher,” she goes back to her composting, “you've said it yourself. No one’s looking for me.”

"It’s just a precaution. I don't want to take any risks -- especially if we're going to be dealing with more beings. Once we get your name decided, we can get the contract notarized.”

“All right.” She closes the lid on the bin, stands up and opens the faucet to wash her hands. “Choose whatever.”

“I don’t want to,” he says sharply. " _You_ choose it."

The uncharacteristic tone makes her stop and she snaps her head to him, reaching over to turn the water off, even though her hands are soap laden. 

He levels his voice. “It’ll be your legal name. You’ll get identity cards with it. Your bank account will be under it. All your documents. Here.”

The names are numerous, the repetition in them unsettling. Maranda, Amara, Marasieh, Maralina, Maranatha, Damara. They’re all --

Mara raises her head. “These are court names.”

He nods, shuffling his feet. His expression remains neutral. “You were raised in court. I thought they’d be familiar.”

Mara stares at him. She wasn’t. She wasn't raised in court, she was raised to _join_ court. It's another one of those enormous facts. To distract herself from the tightness in her throat she forces herself to pick out where some of them come from. Quimara is Kuati, Maranatha is probably Alderaanian, Marayali is Tetian.

He seems to be stopping himself from asking something and her eye wanders down the list. She looks up, hating them all suddenly. Court names. The reminder scratches at her and the tightness in her throat has gone over to a hot swell in her chest. 

“What is it?”

She doesn’t respond, eyes back on the names. Maybe it can be a joke, one that she’s in on. She can pick the stuffiest, most old fashioned one. It doesn’t matter. She’ll never join court. She'll just be a tech in this backwater nowhere with an aristocrat's name. 

“Just a legal name,” she mutters. “For a tech.” 

“They need mechanics. It’s simple, but it’s safe, and it give us a base -- “

Mara goes back to the list as he rambles, she interrupts with. “This one.”

“Marasieh?” he reads, mispronouncing the end as a “see-eh” where it should be a “sheh.” 

She nods without correcting him. It’s Old Core Corulagan. He clearly doesn’t know.

He stops and says it slowly, the mispronunciation more glaring. “Marasieh. Marasieh Edaj," he tests out, "Why that one?”

“I don’t know. Pick something else out yourself if you don't like it.” 

She turns back to the water faucet and finishes washing her hands.

* * *

The house they’re moving into is on flatland several hours from the settlement center. It’s made of local materials, slightly bigger than the cabin, sunnier by far. From it she can see the shadows of another homestead at the horizon, maybe a few kilometers off.

Behind her there’s voices raised as the workers get the few pieces of furniture out, the Jedi helping them. She was with him when he bought the pieces -- all simple: beds, desks, chairs, a sofa, a kitchen table. He might have even tried to consult her on what to get, but she hadn’t cared to weigh in. She wonders why he didn’t simply pay the workers to move the furniture from the cabin over here instead of getting everything new. Maybe it’s just cheaper, given the closer location to town.

While he sets up the furniture with the workers, Mara’s at the open land behind the place. There’s an enclosed area she recognizes as a plot similar to the Jedi's at the cabin, but this one's wild and overrun with weeds. She vaguely recalls him mentioning having to get it back in shape once they move in, a mournful note in his words.

Mara sits on the grass looking around. No stairs, no wood at her feet. It’s a weird feeling, as if she’s suddenly out of place. She remains like that as the clouds begin to gather. 

“Hey,” the Jedi approaches, standing next to her. “I think we’re done.” He grimaces when he tracks her gaze to the plot. “It’s a mess, isn’t it? With a couple of weeks of work it’ll be fine though, can’t be harder than gardening out in the middle of the jungle.”

“It’s still the jungle,” she murmurs, looking up at the sky. The clouds look full, like at any minute it’s about to rain.

“You want to take a look at how we set up before we leave? Inside the house, I mean. I had them put your bed by the window, but I didn’t know--”

“Doesn’t matter,” she gets up, patting the dirt and grass from her pants. “Wherever’s fine.”

A disappointed look crosses his face, but he recovers with an easygoing smile.

"All right," he says, tilting his head towards the speeder in the cleared landing pad a few yards away. "Let's go home."

* * *

They leave the cabin at the end of the week. Mara had already packed most of her clothing, the same clothing she started with, into a crate the night before. The furniture's staying and all covered with plastalum. She's wondered if the Jedi will sell it with the place, but has long decided she doesn't want to know. For all he's talked about the new place they're moving to, he hasn't brought the cabin up at all.

The Jedi had spent today looking over the maintenance droid’s final run of the place, and packing up small knicknacks into boxes. They’d had lunch and gone to the stream, but he'd been distracted, though he'd kept up his usual chatter.

With her few things packed, Mara sits on the floor by the windows in the living room, and tries to read. Her mind wanders and all she does is read the same sentence over and over again. She’s done a good job not thinking about their leaving, but now it feels like a genuine wait. 

“You’re ready?" Asher's voice draws her out of her thoughts. He has a small box under his arm. "If there’s anything else, I can come back for it or we can just buy a replacement.” 

As she stands, she idly wonders where he’s gotten the credits for everything, but this is the kind of thing that she never really ponders for long. It has the ring of _connections_ , of betrayal, and rushing water. She knows that at bottom, the Jedi can do whatever he wants.

There’s only a small box of tools by the door, the hilt of a switchblade catches her eye as she approaches.

“The closest river to the house is the Tal, maybe a twenty minute speeder ride?” He picks up the other box behind her. “We can go tomorrow, see what it’s like. I heard it’s nice, popular with the kids apparently, because there’s a swimming hole...”

Mara goes down the steps, wonders what her feelings about this place are. Rage? Sadness? It’s not that suffocating feeling, that much is clear. She just doesn’t know what it is.

“...And,” the Jedi continues behind her, “he free climbs despite us yelling at him not to -- showing off -- doesn't make the ledge.”

The human organism is resilient, she supposes. It’s part of the genome’s superiority. 

Her eyes fall on her reflection on the speeder's side once she reaches it. Her braid’s red stands out against her cream colored tunic and dark gray pants. It’s too long, way past regulation length.

“Smashed ankle, femur, collarbone, ends up with a skull fracture. Goes back to Dewback Spine again as soon as he can."

 _And when you reach eighteen you will be debuted at a spectacular ball. Frivolous, to be sure, but while all around you consider you merely ornamental, a simple bauble, you will know..._

“We couldn't stop him. I hear he was still doing climbs when I left. Darklighter told my uncle that’s what growing up in the desert does to you -- makes you do something until it almost kills you, and then keep on doing it until it does.”

She’d have been allowed to grow her hair past regulation. She'd always felt a bit of loss when she’d had to get it trimmed.

“My uncle hated talk like that. You know, I should have asked about fishing at the Tal, that might not be bad --”

Without thinking it, she stops, turns around and plucks the switchblade from the box the Jedi's holding. The Jedi freezes, and immediately there’s the press of his mind, brief and it's gone. She grabs her braid with one hand, and slashes through it with her other.

With the next motion, she slides the blade back in the box, her other hand tightening over the braid. Her arm snaps back and she flings it. The braid lands a couple of paces from the front door, its red sticking out against the dark of the ground. She stares at it blankly.

Her gaze shifts over to the Jedi. All he’s taken and she doesn’t know his name. He’s given her a fake. Lies. There’s the sound of rushing water, but distantly.

He meets her stare head on, and she has the sense that if she asked now -- asked anything -- he would tell her. He wants to. She knows it the same way she knows that as happy as the plot makes him, it's a pale second to how he feels behind the T-26's controls. She knows it like she knows his aunt and uncle are dead though he's never told her. She knows it like she knows her face reminds him of someone he loved and watched die.

The murky blue of his eyes weirdly makes her think of the documents -- about inclusions and occlusions, blemishes in the crystals. They’re great identifiers, the document said. Marks of origin.

She turns away. She doesn’t care. It’ll be one less thing to purge from her mind once these four years are done and she can be something else.

Mara gets in the speeder, leans her head back. Asher finishes loading up the boxes and gets in, glancing at her. He starts up the engine and Mara closes her eyes over the sound of the repulsorlifts, over the impulse to look through the window as they rise over the cabin.

"I thought you were selling this pile of junk," she mutters when the silence starts getting to her.

"This is not a pile of junk." The note of outrage isn’t totally unexpected. "It's an upgraded _classic_."

Mara doesn't open her eyes. "Whatever you say, Asher."

"We're going to go through its specs as soon as we get home."

She makes a disgruntled sound. "I'm allowed to have an opinion."

"Yeah, but that's not even a _legitimate_ opinion. You'll have people coming to you for it, it'll be good for you to develop some expertise."

She doesn't open her eyes, aims for snide as she echoes, "Expertise. With this."

"I'll have you know the energy efficiency of the actuator and its stabilizer locking mechanism make her the _exact opposite_ of junk."

Mara forces a loud yawn.

"Not to mention,” he ignores her, “a Fabrictech sensor array -- on an _airspeeder_ like this? It's --it's unheard of. I installed it myself, and it wasn't easy getting it to interface right. I had to rewire the whole console -- unlatch the terminals from the connectors -- the crimped terminal connections looked new, and I still had to solder every single one to solidify the connections and neutralize any oxidation --"

Force help her, she thinks as he rambles on in growing indignance. Four years.

They rise higher and pick up speed, and Mara finds herself imagining dark passages underground, chambers with glittering crystal formations. She sees a prismatic kyber in her mind’s eye, light glinting off its surface, can feel its warmth against her palm. A stubborn crystal. A dangerous one. 

If she reached out to it, said _tell me about yourself_ , would it respond?

It would, Mara decides, opening her eyes. Akiva’s green spreads outward before her until it dissolves into the milky horizon. The kyber would. It has to.

She turns eighteen two days later.

  


end.

[ironic ending track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whW7E9yPYc0)

  
  


We all get by with a little (or a lot) of help from our friends. This was the last fic that my dear bud Jaded read for me before she left fandom and without her encouragement that I should follow my id, I prob would have let it languish. Along the way I had a bunch of support from the whining circle. I victimized Threadsketch, Celina, and Jedi the most. I also somehow managed to inflict this to my bud strangeallure. The whole damn thing. Her eyes are amazing and a huge part of my love and attachment to this was due to her beta work bringing it up and real close to the fic in my head. She gave me so much of her time and brains. Thank you so much.

To everyone who took the time to talk to me about this from an "I like it!" to comments that had me thinking for days, know you are deeply appreciated, that throughout moments when I was frustrated, I went back to your comments and read and reread them to try to get myself re-amped. Thanks for taking a chance on this fic and giving me your time. I sincerely hope it entertained you and that I'll see you again around these parts. <3\. 


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